Quote:
Originally Posted by Camelopardalis
Darkest skies in Europe  so many places claim that, in reality you could probably do better an hours drive from Adelaide Europe is so badly light polluted overall, although there are some decent nooks tucked in behind mountains here and there. If the host was keen to promote that, then he was probably pretty happy with his scope regardless...but if bench tested, maybe he had a duff one 
All things considered, the Trapezium is at a distinct altitude advantage in Australia, barely scraping up 40 degrees altitude even in southern France (whereabouts was the site?). I don't own anything premium such as that, but for the price tag I'd want the view to be good even at that sort of (object) altitude... |
Actually the sky was pretty dark: SQM around 21.6 which isn't bad at all- and the site is tucked away in the mountains about 140km N of Marseille, very little light pollution. See "Sun Star France":
http://www.sunstarfrance.com/. Great spot for astro-photographers on holiday! Ollie (the owner) has lots of "toys" you can use, including a 20" dob if you just want to look, and he is very obliging and on hand to help out.
M42 was 40 degrees up, vs 50 degrees when I was looking at home. Not a huge difference really.