M104

While some of you were enjoying Riker Hill observing I was out with my Orion 80ED taking images of the Sombrero Galaxy (42 min less time than I wanted due to trees) and M51 just under one hour exposure. This was one of the absolutely dark, clear and possible clearest night of late, on a scale of 10, no doubt a 10. The edge on dark line shows much better in this image than previous Sombrero images I have taken. Hope you like it. Also in the image to the lower left is another galaxy, magnitude 13.7 NGC 4562.

Joe Marzullo, Matthew McCuen and myself took a trip 20 minutes south of Whiting to Coyle Field in Woodland, NJ. The location is used for the US Army paratroopers training, looks like a very large field as in airport! To the south the trees are miles away making the horizon look treeless, no buildings, nothing to obstruct your view. The location is flat, and sandy, also used by model airplane flying. To the east and North there are normal trees but did not interfere with alignment. The clouds came in during the afternoon, and slowly hung around until late evening.