Good question .... we had originally hoped that any imagers would be able to be battery powered at night and could recharge during the day, however after 2 camps it's starting to look like only the more "light weight" imaging outfits have been set up to run on portable power.
I had been hoping to buy one of the new (quieter?) inverter type generators to take on this camp for a trial run, suitably equipped with a home made sound shield / box structure and a very long lead so we could park it off in the treeline somewhere.
To be honest it's very hard to predict how people will react to a generator in this quite isolated (ie VERY dark and quiet) location until such time as we actually try it. I guess without a committee decision (and perhaps we need to discuss this and make some kind of decision FAST) all I can offer is that if it's a very noisy 2 stroke generator it may not be popular with the rest of the Campers, if it's a quieter and/or 4 stroke and/or sound shielded unit it may be much more welcome.
At the end of the day the entire concept of the Barambah Dark Sky Camp is about people enjoying their astro hobby as much as possible, in a place where everyone is mutually interested, very supportive and very friendly.
When we say people we mean all people hopefully, no one person or group being disadvantaged by anyone else.
Everything we do in regards this camp is based purely and solely towards this goal, and while you "Can't please all of the people all of the time" so far we appear to have been able to do exactly that.
We have been trying to find a way to make the Dark Sky Camp as attractive to imagers as it is to visual observers, but the lack of mains on the observing field has been a problem, as has the fact that the visible horizon isn't as low as we'd like in almost all directions.
As mentioned previously there is an area up in camp between the buildings, known as the "chess board" because, well, because it is a big chess board!
Anyway it has 240V power available from the nearby buildings, but it isn't a large area - depending on the size of your outfit it could max out at 3-4 imagers, and the trees put even more of a cramp in your imaging field of view there than on the observing field, but anyone who wants to give it a go there is welcome to try!
I reckon if you have room, and are willing to bring the generator to try out on the grounds that if everyone else is really put off by it's noise you're willing to go along with the group mood and leave it off, then by all means please bring it along and give it a run!
Does anyone else (preferably those who will actually be attending and therefore affected by this) have any strong feelings either way towards this? Please feel free to say so either way so we know.