Tucson Dark Skies

About 6 months ago I decided to plan a vacation to Tucson for two main reason. Clear dark skies and biking. Tucson is one of the more popular biking destinations in the US and I have always wanted to do a trip out there so that was the main draw. The side benefit is that it is also a great place for astronomy. We were out here as part of a vacation in 2012 and spent some time at Kitt Peak looking at stars so I knew that it would be a good place to get some pictures of deep sky objects using my Dwarf 3 which I talked about in this post. 

That is why I chose to go to Tucson during the time of the new moon so that the light from the moon would not interfere with getting some good images of the night sky. There are three main types of deep objects that you can image. The first is an open cluster like the Pleiades shown below.

This is just a cluster of stars that look like that are grouped together. Sometimes they are physically close to each other other times they are separated by tens or hundreds of light years but just look like they are together because of the alignment as seen from earth.

The next type of object is a nebula which is a collection of dust and gas and is usually a place where stars are born like the horsehead nebula at that top of the post or the Orion below. 

 

Depending on the  makeup of the gas and the light from nearby stars they can take on many different interesting and colorful patterns.

Lastly there are galaxies which are billions and billions of stars that are gravitationally connected. Like our own Milky Way or the Andromeda galaxy. 

I rented a house at the top of a hill about 25 miles north east of Tucson and spend 2 nights imaging a bunch of deep sky objects. 

I would set up the Dwarf get it aligned to the target then take a nap for a couple of hours until the image was done then get up and select the next target. I didn't get a lot of quality sleep but I got some good images that would be hard to get from our cloudy light polluted skies in NJ. 

This is a picture of the Leo triple. 

This is a picture of three different galaxies at different orientations. Although this picture may not look as cool or as colorful as a nebula it is conceptually mind blowing. I was able to take a picture with some reasonable detail that shows multiple galaxies that could contain millions of habitual worlds.

The house I rented was  in Oro Valley was really off the beaten path as I had to travel up several sand/dirt roads and over cattle grates. It was in a beautiful location at the top of a hill overlooking the valley and Mt Lemmon. 

 

It was a very peaceful place and I spent the day time sitting on the porch and looking at the mountains. It was very relaxing and picturesque. I even got to see a few good sunsets. 

 

Before the trip I wasn't sure if spending two days by myself in the middle of nowhere would be a good idea but I'm glad I did it. I didn't get a lot of sleep but I did get some great photos of the night sky and had a very enjoyable and peaceful couple of days. Next it is on to Tucson to do some bike riding.