Saturday night a small group of avid astronomers took a trip to The White Memorial Conservation Center in Litchfield, Ct.  For those who are not familar with it, the Conservation Center is located in a 4000 acre White Memorial Foundation park. The Center has a museum, hiking trails, and campgrounds, as well as a Museum Nature store, and classroom facilites for large groups. Located just outside Litchfield it is one of the darkest spots in Connecticut to do astronomy, and, it welcomes anyone to view the dark skies.

We arrived just before sundown and set up on a hill above a small pond. When darkness did arrive we were presently surprised with one of the best nights of the year for observing.  Within hours we bagged about a dozen objects. Some that were easy to find, and some more challenging. At 11:30 pm most of us started to pack up as all of our equipment was totally saturated with dew . All in all, a great experience for my first time at Whites Memorial. It won’t be the last. 

Here’s a 14mm image that I took that evening. It is a 2 minute exposure at 1600 asa at f/4.0. I later took the image and located some objects that we viewed on it.