I was fortunate enough to spend the past week in a cabin on an island in the St. Mary’s River, between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. There were two clear nights out of the six I spent there, and they were spectacularly clear and dark. I had my Unihedron Sky Quality Meter with me, and it registered 21.57, even with the Milky Way high in the sky, and I could see magnitude 6.1 at the zenith. That is a very dark sky!

I took one of the club’s 8 inch dobsonian loaner scopes with me along with my own 90mm refractor, and both provided spectacular views. Of course I enjoyed spectacular views of some old favourites, like the Lagoon (M8) and Trifid Nebula (M20), the Swan (M17) and the Eagle (M16), the North America Nebula (NGC7000), the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) and many more. The 8″ dob and the dark skies gave much nicer views than I’m used to here in Hamilton with my scope.

I also made sure to see some objects that I don’t usually look at here. While enjoying a great view of M13, the globular cluster in Hercules, I made sure to see NGC6207, a 12th magnitude galaxy only 28 arc minutes away. I could see them both in the same field of view. See Andrew Bruce’s excellent image of these two object in this years HAA calendar (April) for an idea of just how they looked. I could also see ‘The Propeller’ in M13, a series of 3 dark lanes through the rich star cluster.

Another really nice galaxy was NGC4631, in Canes Venatici. It’s an edge on galaxy that showed some detail under high magnification. At magnitude 9.6 it’s a fairly bright galaxy, but one that I often overlook.

During the summer there will be lots of clear skies and the club has several loaner scopes that you can borrow to see many of these sights yourself.

Watching the sunset over St. Mary’s River, while waiting for a dark sky.

The Milky Way through Cygnus a few hours later.