Lack of Stars can anyone help please

[UK1]

Hi All
I have just got back from Northern Beaches of Cairns in Queensland……. As we are thinking of moving there from Melboune we were looking around at houses, I was also taking in the orientation of the garden for the telescope.
What I did notice and I was in dark places was the lack of stars I could see. I could see more in Melbourne any reason please :confused2: or am I going blind
Thanks all

[jenchris]

HUMIDITY springs to mind.
High level cloud - what did Skippysky say?
Better to stand outside and not in the cellar?

[UK1]

very low humidity and a very clear night

[madwayne]

It would be close to sugar cane harvesting season around now. Which would mean alot of burning prior to the harvesting of the cane. What you may have been seeing was high level smoke.

I was in Cairns late June and there are plenty of stars in the skies compared to my usual haunt in inner Sydney :).

Good luck with the humidity if you do move up there. Brisbane was bad enough for me when I lived there 10 years or so ago.

Wayne

[renormalised]

Humidity and/or smoke would be the culprit. You might not think it's humid but the upper atmosphere up here at this time of year usually carried a very thin high level haze which plays havoc with seeing at times. And, as some of the others have mentioned, you can also get smoke from the council burn offs and some of the canegrowers who still burn off at the beginning of the season. However, you'll find out soon enough just how useless it is trying to observe up here during the late spring and summer. It'll be even worse in Cairns than what it is where I live, in Townsville. They get more rain up that way. At this time of the year, days can be pretty clear of cloud, only to have it cloud over during the night time. Most of our rain happens of a night.

That haze I was telling you about....it sends the sky grey quite often, instead of being blue. Or, it will be a very washed out blue looking sky.

[UK1]

many thanks for the replys

[Groboz]

This would explain my poor seeing conditions last weekend in Darwin compared to the previous 4 months. Humidity and smoke.:mad2: