Sign into an existing account

account deleted by user

Correct. It's kind of weird to be out in an extremely dark sky area. After about an hour, your eyes are about as good as they are going to get in terms of being able to see the lights of the stars. You certainly can see many many more stars with the naked eye, and the milky way is very visible, but Kat is correct, it's not as vibrant in the photo. Still amazing enough to make me just sit there and stare for a couple of hours, though!

And if you bring a decent pair of binoculars, you can easily entertain yourself for the whole night. What really interests me is building a big dobsonian mount and just hunting around for deep sky objects.

In August, the power to our entire county was cut when a derecho tore through with hurricane-force winds.
For the 4 days it took them to restore electricity, we had zero light pollution and the most intense view of the Milky Way.