Dark Skies - Part Deux

Friday was a great day in Luray.  Clear blue skies, some wind but not too bad. And the temperatures were a bit chilly, but warmed up in the afternoon.  Joan and I decided to stay the complete day in hopes that the evening skies would be good for astro-photography.

So, rather than spend the whole day at the B&B we decided to take in some sightseeing and headed over to the SkyLine Drive,  in particular, Stony Man Overlook.  The views were fantastic; much like I remembered them back a number of years ago when we drove the entire length of the drive, twice!  Things changed a bit - like the $20 entrance fee now.

After the great time of outdoor adventuring, we had a really good meal at the SpeakEasy in the Mimslyn Inn.

Arriving back at the cottage, the thin crescent moon was getting ready to set, and, as expected (as well as forecasted) the winds picked up - blowing at 20-35 MPH.  But I had hopes that the winds would die down after 6:00 or 7:00 so I set up the scope and waited inside in the warm cottage.

Eight o'clock came and went - winds howling outside. Nine o'clock arrived on schedule - still howling winds.  Ten o'clock, and time for tea and cake provided by our hosts - still the wind blew, but not as bad, as there were short periods of calmness.  Question is, would it be enough to capture a few 180 sec subs? 

Well I managed to get five fairly decent 3 minute subs to process at around 11:30 PM.  The stars aren't perfectly round, but the sky was crystal clear.  So here is the redo of the Pleiades from Wednesday night, minus the halos from high clouds.

M45 (Pleiades Star Cluster - the Seven Sisters)
EdgeHD11 w/Hyperstar
5x180sec ISO800 f/2

Finally, by 12:00AM the winds ceased - yep, nearly 0-5 MPH!  That was the good news.  The bad news?  The clouds started to roll in.  My sky conditions forecasting software indicated that clouds would thicken until 2:00 AM then scatter a bit.  So it looks like its going to be a long night.

At around 1:30 AM there was a clear spot to the area where the Andromeda galaxy was located. This is the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way at about 4 million light years distant.  In a clear dark sky you can see it with the naked eye extending out larger than the size of our moon.  So I set sights for Andromeda (M31) and captured eight 3 min subs before clouds interfered again.

M31 - Andromeda Galaxy
EdgeHD11 w/Hyperstar
8x180sec ISO800 f/2

I then set up the telescope in fully auto-mode to capture some other objects while I got some much needed shut-eye.  Need to process them yet, but, I was pleased that at last a really good outing in the darker skies of Virginia.  I will need to return here again to capture some other hard to image deep sky objects (DSOs as we Astrophotographers call them).

You can see all my astrophotos on Astrobin at:  http://www.astrobin.com/users/XCalRocketMan/