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Anyone in the Adelaide Hills? Questions about observing...
I have just moved down from Mildura to Blackwood in the Adelaide Hills. I took my scope out for the first time on Saturday night (only been here 2 weeks and clouds clouds clouds) and although the first quarter moon was up and bright I was quite depressed by the level of light pollution.
The LMC was just visible to the naked eye with averted vision, didn't have a hope with the SMC, I could see the location of eta carina though. My backyard is west facing, and the house blocks a fair bit to the east. Towards Adelaide, I have previously noticed that the light pollution is similar to the full moon glow. Looking at a few old favourites (away from the moon), omega centuari appeared about half the size it used to in Mildura, with the resolved stars much fainter, the Sombrero, was also much smaller/fainter, with the dust lane barely visible and centaurus A, again very unimpressive. Both these used to be very clear in my finder, but were totally invisible. Saturn was OK as I would expect.
So my questions:
1) Am I getting unecessarily depressed, is it much better with the moon out of the way?
2) Is it worth getting a skyglow filter for stellar DSOs (galaxies etc, I have a UHC for nebulas)? Or does the composition of the Adelaide lighting too broadband to be worth it?
3) The lack of visibility of DSOs in the finder is pushing me towards getting an Argo Navis. Obviously these are v expensive, and although I have no doubt as to their quality, before going down that route does anyone have tips/tricks to finding DSOs as star hopping is going to take me a longer than it used to?
4) The seeing at Mildura was rarely great (always dust, often wind), and I was typically limited to about 150x. However, on Saturday night it seemed pretty bad, with some wobble visible in the moon and Saturn even down to about 100x and quite a lot at 140x. Is the seeing in the Adelaide hills generally good or bad?
So apologies for the long post and I should probably wait until I have a good clear moon-free night before posting this, but who knows how long that could be!
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