Hows the light polution at your place?

[Starkler (Geoff)]

I have been having a play with google earth and the light polution map overlay as described here to check out what it shows about the places I usually observe from.

Heres a few maps that will be of interest to some here.

1: My home is in the orange section, which doesn't surprise me. My usual spot away from home is well into the green heading towards blue. The sky is fairly dark but with LP to the north and west. Its darker than the Briars site (marker shown) which is run by MPAS but still dark enough to see most objects pretty well.

2: Snake Valley site is nicely dark. No complaints there.

3: Greater Melbourne area.

IMO If you can get out into the green zone or better, you are starting to get into useful skies for enjoyable dso viewing

[Kal (Andrew)]

My house is in Sydneys red zone, not ideal. I agree that you can get decent skies from green zones - ASNSW's 'Crago observatory' which I have observed from before is in the green zone in Sydney's outer west and I thought the views from there pretty decent.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Thanks for the maps Geoff

Nice to have confirmation of my Snake Valley Dark Sky

Both Club site and Astro Camp site are under threat in the years to come though. Both are just on the border of the blue

[mill (Martin)]

Thanks for the map and yheehaa i'm in the green zone.

[sheeny (Al)]

Here's my situation. My place in the green area (but it's worse than that cause I have a street light over my backyard and one over my front yard and one over my neighbours front yard!

So unless the moon is up and I'm planning just to observe/image that, I pack up and go to Blue Hill (near the bottom of the map). Much better there!

Al.

[CoombellKid]

Well I'm comfortably in the grey zone a stones throw from the black zone : )

We have a light dome to the north so I guess that is why, however
it is mostly behind a tree line and out of view and never interferes
with observing. The village where we live is made up of about 6 houses
all of who retire to bed early with no annoying porch lights. Light polution
for me usually cames from the Moon and/or Venus as well as the Zodiacal
light spike which can be pretty annoying at times.

Couldn't handle living in a big city or urban area, it just wouldn't be the same.

regards,CS

[Stephen65]

My house is so far into Melbourne's red zone its not funny. Just as well the Moon and Jupiter have been keeping me occupied lately.

[Shaun]

I tried ti omport it but tells me unsupported files, i am in Coolgardie western australia anyone care to throw up a light pollution map please

[Kal (Andrew)]

Here you go Shaun:

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

Looks like I am in "the Red", but then again so is my bank account!

My sister in law lives in South Frankston and I recall some nights coming out to go home and being just about able to see the Milky Way just standing near a street light.

[Tamtarn]

Thanks for posting Geoff.

We're further out to the east than Seville. We must be just off the map somewhere near the edge of green and blue.

We've had many great nights observing DSO's

Can you tell us if we're near the blue zone Geoff ??

[rhisaac]

Down here in Hobart, Tas is pretty good. Last night the viewing was incredible and I live in the suburbs.

[ving (David)]

hard to tell, but i think i am inthe green.
maybe bordering blue...

[erick (Eric)]

Wish I could say I'm feelin' black or blue, or maybe even green or yellow, but, sadly I'm orange and uncomfortably close to red! And I live in the so-called outer suburbs!

[ving (David)]

someone put up a south west sydney map for me? (cant do this at work...)

[crystal_stars]

I tried to do this. I saved the light pollution picture in both tiff and jpg and neither of them would load into google earth. For both of them it said unsupported file format.

Anyone know how to fix or get round this?

Thanks.

[Kal (Andrew)]

David - you can see Sydney in the picture posted in the article. Basically it is red out to Liverpool, then it is orange all the way out to Camden. Beyond Camden you might get something decent in the green zone.

Crystal_stars, not sure what is going on there. My google earth accepts the following file formats for image overlay: .jpg .bmp .tif .tga .png .jpeg .gif .tiff

[ving (David)]

gee i dont know how you picked the from the pic andrew!

[Kal (Andrew)]

I didn't pic it from the pic David, I cheated by zooming into the area (check your gmail, I sent you a high rez copy yesterday that was too large to post here)

[ving (David)]

cheat

on my way