I have been to Cherry Springs twice before, and it's incredible. During prime camping seasons, there are telescopes brought out for the campers to use and a showing of the night sky. Large open fields work as natural observatories edged with trees that capture fog in the earliest hours of the morning. Arching high above, stretching from opposing edges of the horizon, you can see the Milky Way Galaxy with the naked eye...
Astronomy has long been a hobby of mine. I took an astronomy class in high school, where we had a planetarium and studied stars and planetary bodies. In college, I was able to go to observatories where we opened up the domed ceilings in the middle of winter to take long exposure photos of stars. For an extra credit project, I chose a constellation to replicate, making each point in Ursa Major a to-scale distance from the earth's surface. I had an early appreciation for astrology, but quickly realized that there was so much more to space and stars than arbitrarily fabricated personality types based on the constellational location of the sun and moon at birth.
I'm a little bummed this weekend won't grant full exposure for the area. The reflected sunlight in the form of the moon at waning crescent will still be enough to reduce the viewing of fainter or more distant stars. A new moon would be ideal, but I'll take what I can get - there will be hours prior and post moonrise that can be maximized on.
At some point, I'll be doing a more involved space-related blog. Hmm, probably make that blogs, to be safe. For now, I'm just excited! Even a glimpse of the spiraling vastness of space, with such a limited view from our tiny point in the cosmos, is worth every second.
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