Athena

Hi Nikki,

I suspect that you live at the place I visited on Sunday! If so then I thought it was lovely, and as nice a spot as there is in west London. I may end up having to move into that area myself, and to be honest I would really miss the lower (albeit still fairly bad) light pollution that we have in High Wycombe.

Regarding astro societies, the Wycombe Astro Society (WAS) is located near Amersham. I guess it would be maybe a 40 minute drive, so may be worth considering.

Regards

Baskii

Hi Baskii

Yes, I suspect that you do and yes it's lovely but VERY expensive. Council tax alone costs over £2500 a year. :) And I'm lucky if I get my rubbish collected!

oh well, time for change!

Nikki

Come up north. I am in Sandbach, Junction 17 of M6 and nice skies. Further enough away from Manchester and Stoke on Trent with nice skies. Not quite countryside, but close.

I personally hate London. Too big, busy, noisey and polluted and 'most' people couldn't care less for you.

Move north, much cheaper and friendly

Wow, Sandbach Now I am forced to use an awful cliché:

"It's a small world, isn't it?"

I was born in Nantwich and lived in Northwich until I was about 20. I don't actually remember the sky being that dark but perhaps it was, especially if compared to London.

I dream of taking *very* early retirement and living under a inky black sky somewhere in North Wales. Great for my rock climbing, fell walking and of course Astronomy.

Nikki

Thanks everyone

Well, I'm starting to think a little more adventurous than that. Not wanting to dwell on this issue but I lost my partner back in February to a very rapid and pointless death. Now that I have "recovered" to a point where I can formulate decisions without them being driven by really powerful emotion, I am thinking about selling up in London and moving to South Wales.

I have lots of friends and my family in the North West and it would seem that there are lots of computer jobs around Cardiff. Cost of living cheaper, not as many people around, more friendly and of course a nice dark sky. In fact, living further north again seems very appealing

Nothing keeping me in this awful, unfriendly and light polluted city anymore.

Nikki

Ian:

I have just sent you a PM.

----

Yes, on reflection I am "quite" lucky as I do live inside a National Trust park, which is thankfully devoid of local street lighting.

If I could just sort out that pub then 50% of my problems would vanish, they even leave their powerful lights on all night. There's also a golf club nearby too who frequently leave their pitch lights on, sometimes for as much as three or four days.

I can see the local authority receiving a complaint from a certain individual who is _highly_ concerned about climate change.

Anyway, I have just bought myself a 0.5 focal reducer and a UHC filter which I hope will make things a little better. Am I right in thinking that the focal reducer will make my scope faster, albeit increasing the FOV? Hopefully it should also make it easier to get images onto my DMK CCD which at my current inept stage is near to impossible.

How far from the city does one need to be in order to escape skyglow?

Great help, thanks all.

Nikki

Hi all

I have been out with my new telescope tonight but found myself being disappointed because of the dreaded light pollution. To my west I have Heathrow airport about 1/2 mile away (line of sight) and to the east I have a pub which seems to think it's cool to have really powerful halogen lights directed into the sky...

The only plus is that I have no street lights nearby...

I mean, I could hardly see M13 and M57 tonight. If I really concentrated at the eyepiece and used low magnification then I could just, and only just make them out.

So, I have been wondering, does anybody know of any dark sky areas within striking distance of west London? Unfortunately I have a slightly paradoxical problem: I need a dark sky, but in order to find one, I need to be in a remote location. As a single woman that's a little unsafe... None of my friends share my enthusiasm for spending hours and hours looking through a telescope

What do I do?

Regards

A very depressed Nikki