Sweet Summer Night...

We headed up to Xyliatos with the car full of eager eyes, cameras and telescopes. Arriving at the site we were greeted by a few of our fellow astronomers already set up and waiting for darkness. The familiar smell of the pine trees coupled with the majestic views of the water welcomed us once again. After setting up our scopes, Kyriacos and I went up the trail to the first bench and set up the cameras for some timelapse-ing. As darkness fell more scopes and eyes arrived and pretty soon the ramp was full of astronomers young and old, new and experienced alike. The night started somewhat humid and with partial clouds drifting by, but up until 22:00 the skies cleared leaving behind a dry, crystal clear sky with the milky way arching overhead with remarkable detail. The views through the scopes were simply astonishing. The galactic star fields through the small refractors (80&120mm) were nothing short of spectacular. I found myself constantly returning to Nicos's 120mm to simply sweep the milkyway and stumble upon nebula after nebula, cluster after cluster and pause to marvel at the eerie blackness of those immense dark nebulae. Of special note, the view of M8 with its gas glouds glowing as if made of neon gas, M17 sporting a highly distinct Swan figure, M11 lost in a starry background, the Veil complex (although the pizza slice was nowhere to be seen in the unfiltered view) but especially those dark nebulae....fantastic views. The bigger scopes put on a show of their own too...M27 and M13 through the 11"'s were 3D like. A neat trick we tried was connecting a 2" filter wheel loaded with OIII, UHC-S and HBeta filters. My views with this combo on the Trifid nebula through one of the C11's were remarkable. At the flick of a finger you could switch from unfiltered view to high-contrast, enhanced nebulosity or specifically hydrogen visibility and back again. Quite convenient for dedicated deep sky-ers. All in all the night was very enjoyable and the timelapse I was able to put together isn't so bad either (if you take into account the rookie mistakes I made...)