Dark Skies North of Adelaide

[psadams]

Hi everyone.

I live in the northern suburbs of Adelaide & I'm looking for a good spot with dark skies north of Adelaide to do some star gazing.

I'm only 15mins from Gawler so I'm guessing there should be some good spots in the Barossa Valley?

Does anyone here have any experience observing in this area?

[adlsa5092]

for any Adelaide people, join the Astronomical Society of South Australia and you can use the Society's dark site at Stockport; check out www.assa.org.au

[psadams]

Sounds like a good idea. I might just join this.

From what I can see on their website they have a couple of member viewing nights each month. Are members allowed to use this site at other times without using the observatory equipment?

[fringe_dweller]

for this comet you want a nice southern skies view as well, unfortunately the immediate dark south of adelaide *generally* sucks bigtime, due to local weather vagaries, like fogs that come out of nowhere and local clouds and very windy the closer you get to goolwa/coorong - when its good - its VERY good, but when its bad, yikes! its a heartbreaker.- oh yeah and those damn tree changers sucking up evry inch of elevated land with views ggrrrrr (and in the immediate north and NE)
the cloud free north rocks! btw its MASSIVE! hehe take ya pick

[adlsa5092]

The facility has two domed scopes, 18" & 20" though one does not have to use these. Usually one of them is accessible on members' nights and at other times they could be in use by members for various reasons. There are concrete viewing platforms with 240 available on the pads. Toilet facilities are only available when the site is open. On viewing nights members have the use of BBQ facility - just bring your own chops and stuff. Members have all types of astro gear and they are happy to show it off/talk about it and usual gab. Parking is available just outside the gates though you can drive through to offload large scopes and then remove the vehicle. For a nominal cost, members have access to cold drinks, coffee etc. Anyway, join up and have access to many other benefits like AsroCamps- it's well worth the 45 buck pa.

[JohnK]

A couple of pretty good sites if your prepared to do some driving is to the other side of Burra and further on at the Township of Hallet. Magic Skies.

[Astroman]

Stockport isnt a bad site to do some viewing, I am in the northern burbs too and its easy to take the 45 minute drive out there and do some reasonable viewing. You'll love it... Maybe we can catch up during one of their members nights...

[JohnK]

Yes Stockport's a great site, nice place to park a Meade10" Dobsonian for a few hours.And Comet Photography as well, this is a shot of Comet Mc Naught taken by my mate from there.

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m53/snecmamoteur/StockportMcNaught.jpg