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Hi...from the South Downs National Park

pompeydano

By pompeydano
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pompeydano

pompeydano

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Good evening everyone...

first post so I figure that means first introductions! 

I'm the dark sky ranger for the South Downs National Park, so I have the luxury of looking through a scope in the evening and working to improve conditions in the day time.

It's only been a year since we started our International Dark Sky Reserve application for the South Downs National Park, and I've had a steep learning curve from knowing absolutely jack about telescopes to sitting here with a bottle of wine, letting the autoguider do its thing on imaging M45 under SQM 19.6...what a journey!

But, all your posts have been absolutely invaluable, helping me get the right kit for the job in hand.  (as have FLO in providing it!) :smiley:

If anyone is interested, we're running some stellar surveys that anyone..anywhere can join in with.  You can see if you can see the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye on the www.southdowns.gov.uk/darkskies  i'll be interested to see how we compare to anywhere in the world!   Also..an Orion star count in Feb...

hopefully, in the future, i'll be able to share some images taken from the darkest places in the south east of England, and encourage others to do the same, but for now it's still practising over Portsmouth!  And wine tasting....

Dan 

a.k.a Dark Skies Dan.  

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LouisJB

LouisJB

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Hello and welcome.

I also live on the edge of the South Downs too, although on the edge of a town to not all directions are dark sky. I've not yet taken my equipment out to a dark site such as the Downs. Can you recommend any particular locations. I'm more East, Brighton way - but anywhere in the local area would be good to keep in mind...

Good luck on improving the dark sky status of our local areas!

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pompeydano

pompeydano

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thanks everyone for the comments...

to answer a few in one;

I've been taking SQM measurements from across the downs and the darkest reading so far has been the in the 21.4 ball park....so pretty good.  What makes it so dark is that West Sussex doesn't have many street lights (after the 70's oil crisis) so anywhere north of the scarp slope (north of the south downs way) is going to be dark as the hills shield the area from the dreadful pollution from solent city down to brighton.  I havn't made it past east Midhurst yet, (that's this winters job) but as long as you get away from the likes of petersfield which is a bit like a torch on the landscape, you should find pretty good dark skies.  Next job is to see if any accessible and safe sites exist within the darkest areas....as the darkest site (i'm not telling where yet :tongue: ) is in a ditch off the side of a very small quiet road...not good for setting up for an imaging session!

as for Portsmouth....the good thing is that there is large PFI going on, that is replacing all the street lights to cut-off LED versions.  You can really tell the difference in clanfield where the light pollution has been obviously cut (especially from the observatory up on the hill!).  We havn't assessed the difference but, just the other side of the hill from clanfield is a well used site where you can see Andromeda with the naked eye.  All steps in the right direction!!

I reckon there's a SQM of 21.6 out there somewhere....nice and dark!  Anybody got any ideas what the ultimate challenge for imaging would be under these skies?  Might as well set myself a target!

Dan

Petersfield lighting is soon to be changed so we should see reductions there as well.

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