Any moon
First Dark
Three hours, small group, the southern sky explained from nothing.
- Length
- 3 hours
- Places
- 8
- Available
- 30 nights / month
- Price
- $85
The session for people who have never used a telescope, and the one we would put almost anyone on first. It starts outside with no instrument at all: the southern sky has a shape, and learning to find the celestial pole from the Southern Cross is worth more than an hour of looking through glass.
Then Corvus for the wide objects — the Large Magellanic Cloud takes up four degrees and is a genuine galaxy you can see without help — and Vaciado for two or three targets that need the aperture.
Capped at eight because past that nobody gets enough time at the eyepiece to dark-adapt properly between turns.
What it is pointed at
Altitudes below are computed for this observatory at local midnight on the reference night in the calendar. An object below about 30° is looking through too much atmosphere to be worth the time.
| Target | Catalogue | Mag | Altitude | Bearing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Omega CentauriThe largest globular in the sky. At 610 mm it resolves to the core and stops looking like a cluster at all. | NGC 5139 | 3.9 | 32° | 228° SW |
| Jewel BoxColour contrast survives moonlight, which is why it appears on the Moonlight target list. | NGC 4755 | 4.2 | 28° | 213° SW |
| Eta Carinae NebulaTwo degrees of nebulosity with the Keyhole at its centre. Wide field or nothing. | NGC 3372 | 1.0 | 12° | 209° SW |
| Large Magellanic CloudNaked-eye from here, and four degrees across. Corvus frames it; Vaciado cannot. | LMC | 0.9 | 5° | 177° S |