The Dark Sky

How good is the sky at the SQM22 Bed & Telescope (B&T)? The combination of dark skies, high altitude, and the clean mountain air of the Gila National Forest make the SQM22 B&T one of the premiere locations in the United States for astronomy and astrophotography. Just look at the comparison between these two photos of Sharpless 2-240 (as known as “The Spaghetti Nebula”) taken by Bob Fugate – a physicist and advanced astrophotographer. This beautiful supernova remnant is an ultra-faint network of filaments of ionized hydrogen and oxygen. It is very difficult to observe due to its low brightness.

Bob put together a side-by-side comparison of two photos of the nebula. Both photos were taken with no moon. The photo on the left was taken in the suburbs of Albuquerque (SQM 18.5) and required an integration of 3 hours of exposure over three nights. The photo on the right was taken at SQM22 B&T and required integrating only 40 minutes of exposure from a single night.