iceman
19-10-2004, 07:41 AM
Where do you guys observe?
Backyard? What's your backyard like? Do you have to shift around the backyard to look at different areas of the sky? Are you light-polluted so bad that you have to get out of town to observe?
Do you always go out to a dark sky?
Where do you go when you want a good dark sky night? How far from you home?
Do you spend hours out there? An all-nighter?
For me, I don't get much of a chance to go dark sky observing as I've got 3 young kids and my wife doesn't want me jetting off every weekend :)
So I do most of my observing from my backyard.. the light pollution isn't too bad directly overhead, but most of the horizons are either fairly washed out by sports ovals down the road, or they have big gum trees obscuring most of the view.
From my backyard I get a fairly good view over the roof of my house out to the east and north/east, so it's been a good time to catch the planets early in the morning, though I've found the seeing conditions are terrible if I observe over the roof of my house. You only have to watch this avi (http://www.iceinspace.com/images/images/planets/20040917-saturnmov1-3.avi) to see how bad it is sometimes (that was taken using the movie mode of my digital camera, compress 2 times over - once by the camera and then again converting it to avi).
If I go into the back corner of my backyard I get a fairly good view of the west horizon, though there are 6ft fences and big trees which often obscure my view, so i'm always shifting around.
If I do want to go dark sky hunting, i'll try to go up to Mangrove Mountain or Sommersby, only about 30 minutes drive and far enough out to have a much darker sky and no pesky trees on the horizon!
Backyard? What's your backyard like? Do you have to shift around the backyard to look at different areas of the sky? Are you light-polluted so bad that you have to get out of town to observe?
Do you always go out to a dark sky?
Where do you go when you want a good dark sky night? How far from you home?
Do you spend hours out there? An all-nighter?
For me, I don't get much of a chance to go dark sky observing as I've got 3 young kids and my wife doesn't want me jetting off every weekend :)
So I do most of my observing from my backyard.. the light pollution isn't too bad directly overhead, but most of the horizons are either fairly washed out by sports ovals down the road, or they have big gum trees obscuring most of the view.
From my backyard I get a fairly good view over the roof of my house out to the east and north/east, so it's been a good time to catch the planets early in the morning, though I've found the seeing conditions are terrible if I observe over the roof of my house. You only have to watch this avi (http://www.iceinspace.com/images/images/planets/20040917-saturnmov1-3.avi) to see how bad it is sometimes (that was taken using the movie mode of my digital camera, compress 2 times over - once by the camera and then again converting it to avi).
If I go into the back corner of my backyard I get a fairly good view of the west horizon, though there are 6ft fences and big trees which often obscure my view, so i'm always shifting around.
If I do want to go dark sky hunting, i'll try to go up to Mangrove Mountain or Sommersby, only about 30 minutes drive and far enough out to have a much darker sky and no pesky trees on the horizon!