Hi All,

Here is a couple of quick 3 to 4 minute pretty sky images captured from the new dark sky site, at my friends small 6 acre Farm south of Jamestown, Ohio.

My old SKyShed POD is already out there on a nice deck that Keith built.

I originally brought the Classic C-8, (picked up from the MVAS Silent auction) out here to put it to the visual test, but decided to record the wide field views of this new observing location while I was here.

I started to clean up the classic C-8 old orange tube scope, what a mess! Fogged up (inside corrector plate) looked horrible along with the tube corrosion.

After removing the corrector plate, and cleaning the corrector plate, and tube, I found both mirror coatings to be in excellent condition, actually they looked new, I reassembled the scope with a cleaned corrector plate, re-collimated using a star, and Wow! What a view!

Saw 7 stars in the Trapezium, and Mars was awesome, lots of details, nice ice cap too, very nice optics!!!

It was a real joy to use, no bells or whistles, no Goto or DSS, just simple star hoping and looking.

I’m glad it was not a lemon, and the tracking is superb, those old dual synchronous AC motors were right on, It did a whole 4 minutes unguided, what a deal for $250.00 at the auction.

I piggy backed my Canon rebel camera on the C-8 for these wide field shots.

Hence the black dome in the foreground from the front of the C8.

I was surprised to see the whole sky 1.5 Magnitude deeper at this location, I can see Winter Milkyway nicely! This is pretty good for 32 minutes out of light polluted Dayton, Ohio!

There is a small light pollution dome up 30 degrees from NW horizon (Xenia-Dayton)), another 20 degree one in the SW from Wilmington, a tiny 5 degree dome from a small town off 72 in the NE, but everywhere else is below 5 degrees. So 80% of the sky over head down to 30 degrees is really dark.

There were some high cirrus clouds coming in from the west, so I had to hurry to take a few quick 3 to 4 minute photos before the clouds rolled in.

Image# 1518 ,

Visible are the Winter Triangle, Betelgeuse, Sirius, and Procyon, and of course The Orion nebula, horse-head region, Barnard’s Loop, the Rosette, Hyades, M46 & M47, M41, and many others.

Image# 1521,

clearly shows winter Milkyway straight over head at 11:00pm, Auriga, The Gemini Twins, Taurus, Perseus, California Nebula, Hyades, Pleiades, etc.

Canon Rebel Xsi & 17mm lens at F5.6 ISO 400 for 3 minutes. Shortly after these shot it clouded up solid! Not to mention the 16F temps. So I headed home around midnight!

The site is only 12 minutes further than JBSPO for me living in East Dayton.

My drive to JBSPO was usually 25 minutes, and to the new Jamestown site 32 minutes, all highway & country roads 55mph to 65mph, not a bad drive.

Friends and Fellow MVAS Members, Ron, Carl, and I are considering having some type of permanent setup there.

Best Regards,

John Chumack

www.galacticimages.com