Stargazing at Cherry Spring Park
Just two weeks after seeing Niagara Falls I went on a crazy overnight trip with some new friends to tick off another item on my bucket list: Seeing the Milky Way!
Even though I travelled to fairly rural areas in Europe and got some amazing views of the night sky, there is always enough light pollution to mask the magnificence that is our galaxy. You are never really able to see enough stars that you can actually make out the band like shape that our galaxy forms, so experiencing this was something I always wanted to do.
Some of the amazing people I had the pleasure of seeing Niagara Falls with felt the same and we set out to organise an overnight trip to the darkest part of Pennsylvania, Cherry Spring Park. We couldn’t book any overnight stays, so we decided to leave in the evening and be back the next morning after a few hours of stargazing. The time also aligned perfectly for us, as it was just a few days until the so called star bridged formed over the whole sky.
This phenomenon is part of an ancient Chinese mythology about Vega and Altair, two star crossed lovers, separated but fate (or more like their parent, kinda reminds me of Romeo and Juliette) who only once a year have a chance to be with each other again, when the “river of birds” forms over the night sky on the 7th day of the 7th month in the lunar calendar (for us that was this year the 14th of August) they can reach each other again. This day is celebrated in many Asian countries by young (and old) lovers and some even call it Chinese Valentines day (it’s also celebrated in Japan and Korea).
Anyways, we thought that this is the perfect opportunity to see the Milky Way and on top of that we got to see some shooting stars, since it was also the end of our beloved yearly meteor shower, the Perseid meteor shower. How could we not make that trip?
There are some, understandable, rules when going to Cherry Spring park, first and most importantly, no white or blue lights! White and blue lights not only pollute the night sky but it also takes our eyes several minutes to readjust to the darkness, so they take away from our ability to fully see the stars. Of course there are always people to ignore the rules, but thankfully not the night we went. The moon is also not really helping with his bright reflection, but again we were lucky and the moon set around 10 pm and the sky turned dark. And man did that sky not disappoint!
I never saw that many stars, nor had I ever seen the different constellations that clearly! Or some of them at all 😂 The most prominent ones where the big and small dipper (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor), but we were also able to see the Scorpion (with the help of Hareem who had seen those before in her home country) and of course Vega and Altair! I have to admit, that I don’t know a lot of constellations, how to find them, what their names are, what they look like, but overall this was a treat! I wanted to go to Cherry Spring Park and Stargazing in the US in general for some time now and I’m really happy that I finally had the opportunity!
Of course there are photo’s that were taken on this trip, however, none of them are mine but were shared with me by two amazing hobby photographers, Shasha and Guanyang, they not only took all the pictures but also stitched them together using some program or other and shared them with the whole group of stargazers.
Of course no group trip is complete without a group photo, so with a lot of 10 second countdowns, lots of giggling and laughing we managed to get a 10 second exposure photo of the group and the night sky as well. We will be back to Cherry Spring Park (or other stargazing destinations) but maybe next time we camp out over night?