Airglow and other thoughts on dark sky sites

[Phil Hart]

revealing my true self, i've been an uber-nerd recently and put a blog post on my site following some sky brightness testing over the last few months, including at IISAC and VicSouth.

many of the comments are site specific but i hope some will find it interesting or useful. perhaps. others may just find it long and boring

http://philhart.com/content/airglow-...dark-sky-sites

cheers
Phil

[dannat (Daniel)]

nice report phil -it was interesting looking at the sky at heathcote on the monday with you.. pity about the thick layer of mosquitos

[Rob_K]

Very interesting Phil! If airglow is the major natural contributor to sky brightening, then maybe we need to be looking at the reaction of Earth's magnetic field to the solar winds when planning dark sky viewing! Avoid times of geomagnetic storms etc.

In terms of star light contribution, the 7% must be an average - I'd imagine that there would be significant differences from when, say, the full glory of Sagittarius is arching overhead, to when the MW is lipping around the horizon.

Something to think about in the quest for darkness, great stuff!!

Cheers -

[Robh (Rob)]

Very nice research!
So the gist is that air glow is natural, unavoidable and variable even at the same dark site. I can buy that. Now if I can just find a dark site somewhere nearby where I can worry about air glow rather than artificial light pollution!

Regards, Rob

[Zubenel (Wes)]

Great report . Thankyou. Is there anyone in SE QLD that can replicate these systematic results. Would be good to get some hard data like what has been displayed here