New moon, mid-winter, no cloud. Ten hours and forty minutes of astronomical dark with the moon down for all of it — the longest fully usable night in the eighteen months the calendar covers.
The residency group used every minute of it and were still at the eyepieces when the sky started going at 06:40. Nobody spoke much after about three, which is usually the sign of a good night.
21.97 is the highest reading in our log. For context, a typical suburban sky reads about 18.5, and each magnitude is a factor of about 2.5 in brightness.
Logged by Renata Alcayaga, director.