I spent Saturday night, 2005/2/6 UT, at a dark sky site that I had not been to previously. It was only a 43 mile, 55 minute trip for me, about half an hour less than the two best Astronomical Society of Harrisburg dark sites. I learned about this site while attending the Delaware Valley Amateur Astronomers Solar Saturday earlier in the day.

Present were over a dozen observers from the Chestmont Astronomical Society (see http://www.chesmontastro.org/ ) and the Delware Valley Amateur Astronomers (see http://www.dvaa.org ) and a healthy variety of telescopes, among them CAS President Karl Krasley's 22" TeleKit Dob, at least two 20" Obsession Dobs (one belonging to fellow DVAA member Al Lamperti), an 18" ServoCAT Obsession Dob, a 16" Dob, a 12.5" TeleKit Dob, a 10" Discovery Dob, and a 10" ATM Dob.

The site was surprisingly dark for being relatively nearby and the transparency was excellent. I could see M35 without optical aid when it was near the zenith. The Horsehead Nebula (B33) was a fairly easy target through Al's H-beta filtered 20". The California Nebula (NGC 1499) was not at all difficult through my 101mm Tele Vue refractor mated with Al's H-beta filter and my 35mm Panoptic. Another well known winter nebula, the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237-9, 46), was likewise not a problem for my Tele Vue with the aid of an O-III filter. Comet Machholz Q2 was within naked-eye visibility and its two tails were visible through my refractor at moderately low powers.

I looked at many deep-sky objects as well as the comet, some binary stars, Saturn, and Jupiter during the course of approximately five and a half hours. M1 was as good as I've ever seen it through the 18" Obsession. The extragalactic globular cluster G1 (Mayall II) in M31 was an almost stellar fuzzy spot at high magnification through Al's Obsession.

Two galaxy groups, one of them being Hickson 44 in Leo, met my gaze through the 16" Dob and the other 20" Obsession as well as a number of individual and interacting galaxies.

I saw SN 2005V, the new supernova in NGC 2146 in Camelopardalis (see http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/n2146.html for an image of this interesting peculiar galaxy), through Karl's scope but it was definitely an averted vision object. M42 was very bright and colorful. I also had a look at NGC 2392 (the Eskimo Nebula) at over 500x through the 22". The excellent edge-on galaxy NGC 2683 in Lynx was quite a sight at over 300x through the big Dob. My last view of the night was through Karl's scope and it was a very fine one: M51 and its companion NGC 5195, with M51's spirality being clearly apparent.

The high point of the night for me came when I logged IC 2118 (the Witchhead Nebula) with my 101mm Tele Vue refractor and 35 Panoptic. It was the first time that I've seen this aptly named reflection nebula through a telescope. IC 2118 appeared as a large, faint glow in Eridanus to the west of Rigel and to the south of Cursa (browse http://www.astropix.com/HTML/B_WINTER/IC2118.HTM for more on the Witchhead Nebula).

I'll undoubtedly be paying the State Game Lands 110 parking lot another visit in the not too distant future.

Dave Mitsky

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