My relationship to Astronomy, Pt. 2: New Mexico Skies

Why hello again, my readers. Welcome to Part 2 of my astronomical life, New Mexico Skies. Let's begin:

So, in 2010, my mom met this dude named David Johnson. He's a physicist of sorts. When I first met him, I thought he was AWESOME (now he's one of my least favorite people ever, but that's because of how he treats me and my mother. Badly, in case you were wondering). He told me and my mom about this place called New Mexico Skies. What I didn't know was going to happen was that we were actually going to go there. We did that in June 2011. Specifically, June 23rd to July 1st. Those 8 days were some of the most amazing in my life. The skies there were almost as dark as it can get on Planet Earth. I saw stars I'd never seen before, details of constellations that are lost in the city, and, most amazingly of all, the Milky Way in a detail I'd never before seen with my naked eye.

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What is New Mexico Skies, you ask? It was (no longer open for visitors *crying*) a place where you could go, they had amazingly dark skies, and telescopes for you to "rent" for the night. They'd teach you how to use them and how to image with them. It was awesome. I wish I could go back, but I can't.
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While I was there, I used a BUNCH of telescopes. The main one I used was a 16 inch Meade LX-200 SCT. It was the biggest, and the easiest to use. The majority of the images that I took there came from that scope. (Does anyone want to see my images? They're on my DeviantART) That 16 inch telescope was awesome. Even though it had a tiny field of view, it was still AWESOME for taking images. The other imaging scope I used was a 6 inch refractor. That one was a bit more complicated to use, as it had to be manually re-focused every 45-ish minutes, and couldn't take pictures of objects moving past the meridian (middle of the sky). But, the images that came out of it were FANTASTIC. I took images of three specific objects, The Eagle Nebula (a 135 minute exposure on that, I would explain how that's possible but I don't really think you care), the North America Nebula (90 minute exposure, also my background!), and (I was so glad I was able to catch this object) The Andromeda Galaxy (a 60 minute exposure, was my background picture at one point). That telescope had an enormous field of view, and was just so cool to use. I was SO looking forward to coming back in the winter and using it to image The Orion Nebula, but, alas, that never happened. My entire time there wasn't only imaging, but I also used some visual scopes as well. The first one I used was an 11 inch Celestron SCT. That one was really cool, I saw a bunch of fun things with that. I also used a 30 (!!!!!!) inch dobsonian one night, and that was frakking incredible. That thing was so huge you needed a ladder to see into the eyepiece. I saw nebulae in detail I never thought I'd see visually before. It was so amazingly epic.

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Here's the thing about imaging: It's not much work once the telescope is aligned and stuff. You just tell the telescope to look at this thing for this long and let it do its work. The only thing you do is make sure it doesn't break or something. So, during my time imaging, I legitimately laid down on the platform which the domes were on and looked up. It was incredible. In a real dark sky, you don't even need a meteor shower to be happening to see shooting stars, they can just happen. I saw so many of those while I was there. That was really cool. I also used my DSLR to take long exposure images of the Milky Way, which was amazing. They're also on my DeviantART. Basically what this interludey thing is trying to say is that you don't even need a telescope for astronomy. All you need is a dark sky and your eyeballs. You can still have a fantastic time with just that.
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I had the time of my life at NMSkies. When it ended, I was like "I know I'm going to be coming back here, don't be sad!" And I wasn't. In August, we scheduled a time to go back in December. I was SO excited for that. I would get to image the winter sky and get to see the winter sky darker than ever. Well, guess what? We never went. It was a combination of my mom's back problems and snow storms there. I was legitimately heartbroken. We were going to go back in summer 2012, but we waited too long to book and then they stopped allowing visitors there. I legitimately miss that place. I don't think I'll ever get to go back to a place like that again and do the things I did there. It was the most amazing experience of my life so far, and I miss it quite a bit.

So, that was part 2 of me and Astronomy (hehehe that rhymes!) It turns out it was about the same length as the other one, sorry for people who don't like to read! Part 3 is probably going to be explaining WHY I love Astronomy so much. I could write that today, or tomorrow. I don't know. Stay tuned!