Considering migration to Australia and...

[jones]

Hello everybody,
I'm currently in Scandinavia, and I've been considering migrating to Australia. Among a bunch of other things, I have to consider the quality of an astrophotographer's life in Australia :)

Not that astronomy is my primary reason to move to Australia, but I can't deny that I have considered the... cosmic implications of such move :)

Where I currently live, there are quite a few things that prevent me to enjoy the hobby fully. Mainly:


The weather: the year goes sort of like this: during the Fall, and early Winter (so from September to February), the sky is almost constantly clouded. And by clouded, I mean covered in a think layer of smooth grey solid looking matter. Then from March onwards you get a few chances to do some astrophotography, but hey don't get too excited! It's still mostly clouded! But the length of the day time, at this high latitude, starts to shorten considerably, and from May until mid August it's never going to be dark enough to astroimage. Unless you only want to photograph the Sun, that is.
The light pollution: I live in the capital area, and to get to a dark location you need to drive 2 hours. And by dark I still mean a Bortle class of 3. Nevermind 2. That would be acceptable, but the thing is that it's too cold at nights to be outside long. During the winters (which is when we have darkness), it's common to have temperatures of -20C or colder.


So, as you see, too many clouds and too cold temperature. When I was thinking about the astrophotographical potential of the move to Australia, I looked at the light pollution maps that can be found as Google Earth layers. It looked like a short drive outside of any major city would instantly put you under a Bortle 2 sky! Fantastic! Also the cloud coverage statistics of Australia seem very promising.

So, the reasons why I came to this forum is that I've done my homework: I have checked statistics, climate sites, googled the hell our of the Internet, and now I'm ready to hear what fellow astrophotographers and visual observers have to say from first hand impressions.

So here are my questions:


Do you think that the quality of my hobby would improve significantly in Australia, as I suspect and hope?
What are the best cities for astronomy, amongst the major ones, in terms of: A) weather; B) ease of finding dark locations nearby.
In particular: what's the situation in Sydney? That's the likeliest place where I could find a job.


Thank you very much if you read this far, and thanks in advance for the answers!

[OICURMT]

What can you do? Jobs are abundant, but there are restrictions on work here in Australia, depending on what your jobs skills are...


Depending on what you can do or want to do...

[jones]

Hi,
what I meant to say, is what is the situation in Sydney with regards to the weather and the light pollution. I have found references to the Blue Mountain park, and the light pollution map shows it as a Bortle 2 location.

To address your question, though, I'm a software engineer, and I although I haven't actually started the Visa process yet (I'm selecting a migration agent) I have performed some job searches on seek.com.au and similar sites, and it looks like there are a lot of vacancies I could be a good fit for. But here on IceInSpace I would like to concentrate on the astronomical point of view of things :)

[ballaratdragons]

Hi and welcome Salva.

Well, to start with, yes, most of Australia has dark sky due to low population and a huge country.
The cities are probably the same as most cities anywhere, but you don't have to travel far to find reasonably dark sky. About 1 hour.
1 1/2 - 2 hours and you will be in pitch black!
As far as weather goes, that's a different matter.
The climate here is amazing. It can go from a cool 12c to 40c within 48 hours.

In our summer we get a lot of dust, heat haze, and bushfire smoke. But you might enjoy our winters. We rarely get below -6c and the nights are long and dark :)

I am out in the country, about 1 1/2 hours west of Melbourne, Victoria and it is nice and dark :thumbsup:

Because of the way most Australian cities are set up, you can live out in a dark country town and be at work in the city in 1 to 1 1/2 hours by public transport.
Many people spend that time sitting in traffic to get to work and they live in the city!

Ask more questions if you need to so we can help you :thumbsup:

[jones]

Thanks for your answer Ken.

I have looked at sunshine hours statistics for Australian cities, and it looks like Melbourne and Sydney are on the poor side of the spectrum. I think that anything would be an improvement from my current situation, but can you or anyone comment on the amount of usable nights per month in the various seasons?

[ballaratdragons]

Gee, that is very hard to answer. Our weather has been all over the place for the last few years that it makes it almost impossible to comment on a 'standard'.

So far 2011 has been terrible.
2010 was not a great year for cloud free nights.
Whereas 2009 gave us months at a time of totally cloud free skies.
2008 gave long periods of cloud and long periods of clear.

At the moment our long range forecast is a bit 'hit & miss'. :shrug:

I would love to say that a certain part of Australia will have a high percentage of clear nights, but that is impossible lately. La Nina has really turned things around.

[jjjnettie]

South East Queensland has the best of both hemispheres astronomically speaking. All the Southern objects and a fair chunk of the Northern sky too. (surely you don't want to live somewhere where you can't see M31 ;) )
The people are friendly, the beaches fantastic, and the countryside is beautiful!
What more could you want?

[cybereye]

I'll second what jjj has said. South-east Queensland really does have the best of all worlds! I grew up in Sydney, lived in Adelaide and Perth but have settled in Brisbane. The winters here are just spectacular - clear skies most of the time and day time temperatures of around 22C. Night time during winter in Brisbane can get down to 0C on the rare occasions but is usually around the 5-6C mark. I love dragging the scope out into the backyard for a couple of hours of viewing and/or imaging despite the chill - it's worth it! And like most cities in Australia it doesn't take very long to get out to a dark site.

And if you remove the recent floods from the equation summer is usually good too - a bit cloudy, the odd thunder storm, hot and humid but still bearable! I can't think of any place I'd rather live to be honest!!

And to think a born and bred New South Welshman like myself has given SE Queensland such a thumbs up. Just show's you how good it is!!! :thumbsup:

Cheers,
Mario

[GrampianStars]

G'day Salva
FORGET the north of Australia (QLD) You will not like the humidity, also you have seen the northern stars.
Forget Sydney NO DARK SKY within 2 hours drive in chaotic conditions! (tried that) :mad2:
CHOOSE just out of Melbourne is best :thumbsup: The climate will be much kinder to you, also the stars of the southern sky are best ;)
I'm 3 hours west of Melbourne and the sky is DARK :eyepop: mag 7.5 visually easy! :D

[marc4darkskies]

Funny how parochial we all are! :lol: I wouldn't dream of suggesting that 1.25 hrs northwest of Sydney (where I am) is the best place! ;) Within commute distance of Sydney city and sky darkness good - especially west of the meridian.

Beware though Salva - the weather up and down the eastern seaboard has been terrible for the last 12 months because of La Nina - lucky to get 10% clear nights I reckon. When La Nina is not in play, or El Nino kicks in, clear nights are plentiful though!

Cheers, Marcus

[M110]

Hello salva,
I live in the country's southern most state of Tasmania. I live in the state's capital city, Hobart. Our state's population is a little over 500,000 and Hobart's is about 220,000. Finding dark skies hear is so easy, I only have to travel 15mins for reasonabley dark skies or half an hour for as darker skies as you could possibly want. Our average summer temp is about 22c and winter anout 10c and almost never get temps above 30c. We very rarely get high humidity, as the mainland states do. We get most most of our clouds during spring and early summer, autumn and early winter are usually cool clear nights. We have the longest nights in winter as we futher south
The only downside of living in a state with such a low population, is there no astronomy shops at all. I have to import stuff from Sydney or wherever. A few days wait, no big problem.
All the best with your big decision
Andrew

[tlgerdes]

Sorry, but from the sound of it Salva, anywhere in Australia is going to be an improvement over your conditions. :thumbsup:

:) I am Sydney (city) based, but image from the country 3hrs north west of the city once a month. Great to get away from the city for some R&R.

[alan meehan]

Hi and welcome Salva
Well i live in newcastle thats 2hrs drive nth of sydney and doesn,t have as much light polution problems as sydney does,we have not what you would call good skies as the whole of the eastern seaboard from qld to victoria is suffering from la nina.in saying that i think we have a good share of good nights,Qld not a bad spot generally though they have had there share of bad weather of late ,and theres the humitidy that takes some getting used to although nights can be spectacular.al lthat being said aust is a small enough place to travel around and we have heaps of good starparties.
ALAN:hi:

[OzRob]

I have no idea about how you view your astrophography but immigrating to another country in pursuit of a hobby seems a bit extreme. Have you considered hosting a telescope somewhere? Obviously this will cost you but there are great benefits as well.

Perth would be worth considering as well as the larger cities. It is in the middle of a resource driven boom so getting a job should not be an issue. The weather is a bit more stable than those in the east. Clear nights during the summer are almost guaranteed every night. Cloudy periods during the winter tend not to last long with clear breaks between the rain-bearing fronts.

[IanL]

Hi if you do come to Australia i think where ever you are in the country you enjoy it.
Its Gods country here and the astronomy/astrophotography is great too. *Best of luck.

Ian

Sent from my iPad

[AstralTraveller]

Well, I'm not going to be parochial. The skies in Wollongong are awful. It travel about 45 mins to observe in the southern highlands. Even there the skies are not as good as they used to be in Wollongong in the 70's. A bit further afield and things improve considerably - I've seen great skies at Bungonia and around Goulburn - but for one night trips the travel time gets prohibative.

IMHO you should look at Perth as an option. Being relatively small it's easy to get out of town and the air is very stable and dust-free because it has just come off the Indian Ocean. I've seen the Horse Head in a 20cm newt from Dryandra (where ASWA have their astro-camp). But I think the skies up on the Yilgan Block around Leonora and Meekatharra may be better (I didn't have a scope so that is a naked-eye estimate). Even a site up in the hills above Perth, still in suburbia, used to be good. That was >20 years ago so things may have changed for the worse.

BTW the area around Meekatharra and also the northern Flinders Ranges were on the short list of locations to site the 3.9m AAT, which was eventually placed at Coonabarrabran. As I understand the main advantage of Coonabarrabran was that it is closer to the main population centres (especially Sydney and Canberra) where the astronomers work. This was, of course, in the days when astronomers actually had to travel to an observatory to do obs.

If you do decide on Sydney (and I assume the same is true of other cities) think about where in the city you want to live. It can easily take an hour to cross Sydney. So, if you were to leave from Bondi by the time you got to Liverpool someone who left Liverpool at the same time would be most of the way to Goulburn. Then again, only a madman or a masochist would live at Liverpool if they worked at Bondi.

Happy debating! :thumbsup:

[ballaratdragons]

Not at all.

I moved here for the skies.
I spent a lot of time checking places for exactly what Salva is after.

If I had my choice of places to live, without astronomy as a driving factor, I would move back to the Toukley/Budgewoi area on the Central Coast.

The further West/Northwest you go in Victoria the better, but here is close to Ballarat and not too far from Melbourne and still offers nice dark sky.
Weather? Hmmm . . . different story :lol:

I am not an original Victorian so I'm not hung up on 'State patriotism' about Victoria.
I actually still feel like a New South Welshman.

But to help Salva, I can only suggest somewhere within an arc of Melbourne as shown on this map (shaded area). There are darker places but they are getting further from the city of Melbourne.
Locations outside other cities can be done by people who know the areas better :thumbsup:

[TrevorW]

Western Australia

[ballaratdragons]

All the places with the most clear sky are nowhere near cities:

Port Hedland in W.A. looks best, but no good for work.

http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climate_averages/sunshine-hours/index.jsp

[M110]

I don't think we parochial. We are speaking the areas we know best, our homes.

[AstralTraveller]

Forget that place. First it's hot. It's uncomfortable (unless you like 40) and the seeing is generally muck. Second, as the graffiti said 'it's not the end of the Earth but you can see it from here'. It's where the desert meets the ocean. On our day off we sometimes drove 80km to find a tree to have a picnic under. If you do want it dry go to to The Alice.

[jones]

wow guys, thanks for the overwhelming level of response :thanx:

Let me address some of your comments:


Melbourne best? According to the climate statistics, Melbourne looks like the city that's most often overcast, amongst the major ones. Can you comment on that? I repeat, everything is likely to be an improvement over my current situation (I suppose 20 clear nights a year - go figure the chance of new moon!), but I wanna maximize my chances! :)


That's so good to hear, Alan! Where I currently live, the concept if starparty could not be more foreign. People tend to be rather solitary. Guess the country :)


Hi Rob,
as I said, I'm not going to migrate in pursuit of my hobby. Astronomy is very important to me, and while not being a deciding factor for deciding where to move, it is deciding in determining where not to move. I have chosen Australia for other reasons, and I want to make sure that I also end up maximizing the enjoyment of my hobby.

With regard to what you said about Perth, it sounds very attractive and me and my wife indeed would prefer a city that is not as big as Sydney. But I have performed job searches in my field in the major cities and I have found that Sydney has overwhelmingly higher chances of seeing me employed in the shortest time.


Hmm, second one in this thread to suggest Melbourne. I must ask again: doesn't the Melbourne area get way more overcast and rainy weather than the rest of the country?


To finish, again I must thank you all for the replies. I suspect I'll get a very welcoming astronomers' community if I manage to move to Australia :)

[multiweb]

I reckon between SA and VIC NE of adelaide would be pretty sweet.

[ballaratdragons]

Similar thread from back in 2007 might have some insights:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=17659

and in 2008:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=38160

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=27713