...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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