Moving to a dark(er) location...

[RolandosCY]

...As a permanent residence... Will this change my observinh habits?

Until now, we have always been living in urban locations. I grew up and lived most of my life near the center of a 250,000 people city (best SQM around 17.9). For the last four years I have been living on the outskirts of a smaller city (75,000), and the quality of my skies was significantly better (averaged 19.6 on SQM, rarely up to 19.8). Now we are moving to a small town of around 800 people, and even there we will be on the outskirts. SQMs from my new backyard average around 20.7, and less than five hundred meters away they exceed 21 (main source of light pollution in the backyard seems to be street lights reflected from the walls of the two neighbouring houses).

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I do have good east, north, and south horizons (west being blocked from my house, and my front yard which looks west is illuminated by streetlight). The town itself is considered as being in the green zone, albeit very near the boundary with yellow (some maps do put us in the yellow zone). Thankfully, some hills do significantly block the light domes of the before mentioned large city (18 miles to the north) and smaller city (14 miles to the east).

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This move gives me access (in theory) to deep sky observing at my fingertip. OK, it is not going to be the same as trying for the faintest of the faint from my best site (21.63 average, but about 105 miles away further west) or my other mountain sites which are about 45 miles away, but it still should give me lots of potential. If the conditions seem decent, then it will be a matter of just setting up my 18" in tghe backyard, and after finishing just wheeling it it inside and going to bed! This is something I have not been doing at my previous places, as even in the best of nights my previous skies limited the potential for serious deep sky observing. I expect that instead of a maximum of two sessions per month I will be able to have five or six sessions per month, plus the possibility of observing in the predawn hours as well. In addition, as I mentioned above, I expect to see a change in my observing habits. Most significantly, I believe I will be able to spend longer times on a given target, as I will know that I am no more limited by the need to pack up and travel. In addition, knowing that I can observe several nights per month, will allow me to be more relaxed about my observing, not trying to squeez every possible second ot of an observing session, leaving me dead tired at the end (let's face it, knowing that it will be at least two to three weeks until the next observing session sometimes pushes us too much at the eyepiece and at the end observing suffers from our need to do more observing!).

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I am really excited about this change. We have just started the moving process, and if all goes well by the end of January we should have completed the move. My astronomy equipment is scheduled to move over to the new house by January 24 or 25 (with the help of fellow DSF member NicosCY), and if conditions are good, I expect my next observing report to be from the new house!



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[Ivan Maly]

Nice place you got, Rolandos. And the conditions are bordering on such that I might just accept and not travel to darker skies, at least not routinely. In fact it sounds similar to our club observatory site. If you are more relaxed and rested and observe longer and more often it must compensate for a couple tenths of mpsas for sure - maybe more. No doubt you will see more stuff that is comfortably within range of your equipment; as regards the threshold stuff I don't know, but you will tell us.

[aatt]

Sounds great-my area is getting worse. I think you will observe more from home now, but then again my light polluted skies don't stop me even though they can be frustrating with the fuzzies.

[nicoscy]

Well, Rolandos has yet to post his observing report, but we did observe from his new home last week. 3 observers with 18", 12" and 8" Dobs.

We started with easy pickings, but one cannot ignore a supernova, especially in your proverbial back yard (M82 is practically breathing on us). The Horsehead nebula was "easily" visible with direct vision (Hb filter used of course) through my 12", so that says a lot for the location. None of us pushed our instruments to the max as we were more concerned with familiarising ourselves with the location.

I picked a comfortable spot which gave me full access to the constellation of Orion, Canis Major and Gemini (I parked my scope on the patio due to issues with grass - see below) and I promptly took full advantage of the views.

Various adjustments are required (convince the neighbours to help with their lights, do something about the street lamps) but these will come in time. That lovely grass you all see is fantastic to look at, but creates an instability to the rocker box of any scope, so that's another issue to address. These "negatives can be easily remedied / addressed so the potential of this site is awesome!

I admit to being jealous. It's a luxury, make no mistake. Hopefully when my kid moves out (that will be 10 years down the line!) I will make the same move. For the time being, I am stuck in the city (SQM 17.9 per Rolandos' post - same city) and the only thing I bother with is Moon and planets. Ideally [hint - hint] I will be taking plenty of trips to "visit" [wink] Rolandos [nudge] , weather permitting.