Star party site requirements

[davidpretorius]

Hi,

I am planning for a star party in tasmania in the next couple of years. As i drive the state, i am constantly looking for horizon to horizon views and no city glow (Do you think I am hooked????).

I have some sites in mind but a few questions

Given we drove for 20 minutes at 110kph from ballarat and yet still saw sky glow, is there a rough rule of thumb to get a certain distance from a ballarat sized town for no glow? 100km???
How do telescopes and the ocean work together. Does sea mist and resulting salt deposits play havoc with optics???? These are places up the top right hand corner of tassie where the northern view would be over water, the eastern view over water and the south and west over low ground. There are no citys of any size up that way!!! But do views over water, bugger things up more?
I think Chris Vetner has asked this, but do we have a rough calendar of parties we all like to go to during the year. A trip to tassie would be a major undertaking and I would want to be conscious of school holidays and boat fares etc
We have a lot of festivals in February each year, so day trips to wineries etc would be great day trips???

Any comments or feedback to the feasibility of a tassie party would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

[Starkler]

Tasmania only has two towns anywhere near the size of Ballarat lol
If memory serves Ballarat would be bigger than both of them :lol:

If I was in Tassie planning something like this, I would keep accessability in mind.

[davidpretorius]

Hobart has 150,000 and launceston 80,000, so sky glow from both can be a problem.

accessibility ie getting to the island or once on the island????

[Starkler]

It was a few years ago that I went there, but I recall travelling times cant be judged by distance on a map. Accessability in the sense that its not so hard to get to that people wont bother to come.

[Jonathan]

Hi David,
This picture should give you an idea of where the light pollution is. It looks pretty good in Tassie overall.
The full map is at http://www.inquinamentoluminoso.it/worldatlas/pages/fig9.htm