I had the rare pleasure of vacationing for four days in Galena, Illinois over the 2000 Thanksgiving holiday. I must say that astronomically speaking, the experience surpassed all my expectations. My family along with my wife's parents and brother’s family rented a house in the Galena Territory. That area of our state is so beautiful with rolling hills and paths to walk by day. Of course, the highlight for me was the night!
I haven’t had many extreme dark night experiences since I have started gazing at the heavens. In fact I have only experienced one dark sky in Connecticut this August. But that was nothing compared to the absolute dark that the Galena Territory offers. It was so dark that I have to admit I was spooked the first night I went out. I set up the telescope just 20 yards from the house we were renting. As I stepped out from the lighted indoors I you could not see the scope! I had to shine my red flashlight just for my family members to find me. Adding to the spookiness was the fact that houses were acres apart which gives this rural mindset some imaginative stirrings in the brush near the house. Of course hearing the coyotes howl at one another was fantastic as well.
Surprising to me, my biggest thrill was from the whole experience was seeing the Milky Way appear before my light stained eyes in less than a minute! That was my most memorable of many sights I had in the two nights I spent observing.
Ranking second was the absolutely spectacular views I got of Jupiter and Saturn. The second night was simply transparent. I could easily see 6 bands on Jupiter, 5 of which stayed in view without winking away. I also got a thrill from seeing the Great Red Spot so clearly! Saturn showed off it’s rings as impressively as I had ever seen. Val and I enjoyed the dark band around the planet itself. The only time I had seen this band was a picture that the Hubble telescope had taken. We quick counted 7 moons around the ringed planet as well.
I discarded the computer on the scope to manually find a few objects for my FVAS Messier Hunter binder. Before I bought the telescope I had spent months memorizing star charts and have a decent perception of the constellations. But I’ve been basically too lazy and strapped for time to not use the computer goto controls. This was my first time manually hunting other than when I has my 60mm refractor. I really enjoyed the search more than I had thought I would. I set out to find the 3 open clusters in Auriga which were fairly easy to find. Given the dark skies, the clusters showed up very clear in my finder scope. I had never seen them through it before. I was amazed at how 3 dimensional they appeared. They easily yielded 2-3 times as many stars as I could see from my back yard. I almost don’t want to see them from here again. The image of M38 is engrained in my mind even as I write this days later.
I managed to snap some pictures of the planets and even branched out to take some daytime photography. The natural beauty of Galena is remarkable is so many aspects. I hope to share the pictures at out December meeting.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to spend a night in Galena or some other very dark sky you should make some plans to. I have already blocked out 4 days to do so there next summer. I’m glad to share this dark experience with you and I hope I have painted an adequate picture!
- Andy Weeks
Copyright © 2000 Fox Valley Astronomical Society