Light pollution map of Australia

[Starkler]

Check this link (http://www.inquinamentoluminoso.it/worldatlas/pages/fig9.htm) for a light pollution map of Aus and where you have to go to get to really dark skies

If you have a look around the site you can see we really are the lucky country !
For Victorians this confirms what I thought about the night sky west of Ballarat :)

[silvinator]

Look at those rotten sydneysiders, using so much light :P

[Starkler]

I downloaded the hi res image, 280mb of Tiff file !
Heres an appropriately resized version for the east states.

Legend:
Colours correspond to ratios between the artificial sky brightness and the natural sky brightness of: <0.11 (black), 0.11-0.33 (blue), 0.33-1 (green), 1-3 (yellow), 3-9 (orange), >9 (red).

In real terms, once you get into the blue region things are starting to get good for viewing faint fuzzies.



http://gar.customer.netspace.net.au/scope2/Auslight.jpg

[Vermin]

I downloaded that monster too.

Did you notice the shift in the LP on the south island of NZ? Must be all the squid boats at sea :)

Look at lovely dark Tassie!

[rumples riot]

My block over on Your peninsula also looks very good. The night sky there is pitch black with millions of stars. Even objects like tarantula and eta carina are visible to the naked eye. Love the sky over there.

[ballaratdragons]

Yeah, I like it dark out here.

According to that map I am on the line between the grey and the black directly under the little grey dimple, west of the Ballarat glow (the little glow on the left of the big Melbourne glow).

[Starkler]

If I lived where you do , I'd have the 12inch gso if I never had to think about moving it to darker skies :lol:

On second thoughts , maybe an 18 incher built into an observatory shed !

[Robby]

Poor old NZ... It looks shocking from this map! I'm sure we're not as bad as that...!! Time to emmigrate to a darker sky.

[ballaratdragons]

Robby, just move to the west coast!

Starkler, that is my intention - soon.

[Late_Cretaceous]

http://www.inquinamentoluminoso.it/worldatlas/images/fig2.jpg


I wonder if snow cover or seasons could affect the results of these pictures. I live inthe northern-most orange circle in this image. This is not a highly populated area. If fact, once you get out of the city its nothing but farms and forests and a few small towns. Heck, the country side starts even before you leave the city limits.

Yet it appaers that the surrounding area is as bright as the densly populated areas of the great lakes or US northeast.


It may be that the image was taken during a time when the ground was covered with snow in this region, and therefore affected the amount of light reflected up into the sattelite's camera.

It would be nice to see pictures taken at different times of the year.

[janoskiss]

I could not find any decent Victorian maps to overlay the light pollution plot, so I added the names of some of the culprits:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~janosk/light-pollution-VIC.jpeg

[janoskiss]

Here is a more printer friendly version:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~janosk/light-pollution-VIC-contour.png

[Starkler]

Great stuff Janos , ima gonna save that pic !

[Striker]

After looking at that....I have decided to go live out in the ocean....but dont tell the wife.....lol

[janoskiss]

Don't go too far east; the boats near Lakes Entrance might spoil the fun. The clearest skies I've ever seen were at Wilsons Prom (that's the southernmost point); nice to see the data agrees.

[iceman]

That's very cool.. Sydney/Central Coast/Newcastle is pretty bloody bad.. West of the central coast isn't too bad, just need to find a scale map to find out how far west that is, to get in the grey area instead of the blue area.

[ballaratdragons]

Now that Janos has added the place names I can tell you exactly where I am.

In between the 'B' and 'a' in the word Ballarat.

I thought i was right on the edge of the grey :(

[janoskiss]

Don't despair, ballaratdragons! Look on the "dark" side! There is even more things to see if you drive a little further West! :)
Hey, I'm somewhere near the border of the red and orange of Melbourne!

[ballaratdragons]

Hey Janos,

Don't have to travel. I can actually see 47Tuc, Jewel Box, Orion Nebula etc. with the naked eye from here.

[Mombat]

I used to be in the grey Now i Live in the red of melbourne gaddamnit oh well the holidays are only 67 days away

[De-Gen]

Couldn't see much of the night sky where I live :(