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!