How Dark Are Your Dark Sites?

[The-MathMog]

I am just curious as to how dark your dark sites are that you go to, when not observing/imaging from the backyard? Of course less light pollution is always better, but what do you personally consider a minimum for good observations?
Using the attached map as a reference, I live in a yellow area, and can manage to get to a "faint yellow" fairly easily, and green if I push it a bit (the life without a car). Anything less than "dark blue" is almost impossible without leaving the country haha.
I of course already know my limitations, and what places I plan to go to, but it would still be nice with some more experienced insight

Also just to add a bit more to the topic as the first part is a bit "go as dark as you can", in what kind of light pollution should a light pollution filter be considered? I believe I've heard somewhere that they aren't very effective in hard pollution anyway. 

http://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html

-Mathias

[Guest]

yellow is really good based on your map. i live in a red area and can get somewhere it borders a orange. i need to travel a lot further to find a yellow

i prefer to use this map

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info

 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Here in south-east Hertfordshire it's not great but I can still make out the Milky Way and Andromeda from half a mile outside town, from a zone that is marked bright orange. I do most of my imaging from down in Cornwall on the edge of Bodmin moor, which is properly dark. The highest SQM reading I've seen there is 21.72 and I've glimpsed M33 with the naked eye a couple times.

To be honest, I'm not convinced that map is terribly useful. The key isn't explained and looking closely in Hertfordshire areas I know to vary greatly in brightness all show up as the same colour. It doesn't show the impact of local light sources but appears to be biased towards showing LP from cities.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

37 minutes ago, Dakaar said:

yellow is really good based on your map. i live in a red area and can get somewhere it borders a orange. i need to travel a lot further to find a yellow

i prefer to use this map

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info

 

That's a much more granular map and checking against the areas I'm familiar with more suitable for finding local observing sites.

[rockystar]

From your map, I live in a dark red zone, my main dark site is dark yellow, which is a 45 min drive, and my second site is another level of darkness, but that's 1hr 15 min drive.

To get to really dark skies, i'd need to travel for about 2.5 to 3 hours!

[YKSE]

Don't know how precise the colours in that map decribes the darkness.

The dark sites I've been to, are light green or border of light green to dark yellow. My SQM measured 21.0-21.4 for the former, 20.7-21.2 for the latter. Not truly dark, but with good dark  southern sky, which is good enough for me so far.

[domstar]

I can move from pink to yellow with a ten minute drive. I could get to dark yellow easily- maybe I'll give it a whirl when it warms up a bit.

[SilverAstro]

4 hours ago, Dakaar said:

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info
 

Thanks for the link, very interesting.

4 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

That's a much more granular map

very granular, detailed and yes quite representative of the areas I know.

The only trouble I am having with it is relating the colours in the legend with those on the map overlay, perhaps I have missed something obvious ?

For example : the Exmoor dark park is a muddy brown surrounded by a slate grey, neither of which are in the legend

I always thought I was fortunate and the good news is that my garden is one level up from that surrounding exmoor  

[Guest]

i think the muddy brown indicates national parks. and the grey is the black, so <0,25.

my garden is in the 20-40 range. although i have a street light in view making it 10x worse. my away from home site is 1-3. would love to get out to the peak district but im struggling to find where in the south to go

[Ceramus]

Intersting websites, thanks. I'm in between a green and blue area in the lightpollution site but suffer from streetlights of two villages across tha valley which I have to shield from when observing, especially when nocturnal football matches are on!

[glowjet]

Hi Mathias, I think your light pollution filter question is related to the old Sodium public street lighting, where the appropriate filter provided some relief. As far as I am aware, there is no filter which can help with the new LED public lighting. Best to get as far away from the area as possible.

Most useful and interesting light pollution maps. However, I would like to mention that there are three World International Dark Sky, Gold Tier sites. It so happens one of these lies within the Northern Hemisphere, located within the ring of Kerry, CO Kerry, SW Ireland. In my view, its a shame the pollution maps have not indicated this outstanding area, as armed with this knowledge, there could well be a number of imagers wanting to benefit from an imaging holiday break, to really totally dark skies, lying virtually on our door step. The only problem could well be the unpredictable weather, as it loves to rain in Ireland 

[iapa]

11 hours ago, Dakaar said:

yellow is really good based on your map. i live in a red area and can get somewhere it borders a orange. i need to travel a lot further to find a yellow

i prefer to use this map

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info

 

By this map I am apparently in a slightly orangish area about a half mile from a 1-3 green area, 

Personally I think the gradation of these maps is a it too 'gentle', so I find it hard to match the map to the scales.

If they could be a bit more interactive and show the pollution level in an area you click on.......

Anyway, perhaps I have it better than some?

Just doesn't reflect in my images LOL

[RayD]

Fortunately our house in Spain where my Esprit 100 is going to live permanently is in the Sierra de las Nieves national park, and is showing as green.  Pretty dark 

[Stub Mandrel]

I've had the benefit of being on Skye in the 1-step from the darkest zone.

My 'local' dark sky site is in the middle of a yellow zone.

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Me  Not too bad though when all the street lights are off after midnight. I reckon we go to yellow or green then. Most annoying is one light right next to where I set up the scope...I will have to hire Russian Hackers, lol  

 

[rockystar]

19 hours ago, glowjet said:

Hi Mathias, I think your light pollution filter question is related to the old Sodium public street lighting, where the appropriate filter provided some relief. As far as I am aware, there is no filter which can help with the new LED public lighting. Best to get as far away from the area as possible.

Most useful and interesting light pollution maps. However, I would like to mention that there are three World International Dark Sky, Gold Tier sites. It so happens one of these lies within the Northern Hemisphere, located within the ring of Kerry, CO Kerry, SW Ireland. In my view, its a shame the pollution maps have not indicated this outstanding area, as armed with this knowledge, there could well be a number of imagers wanting to benefit from an imaging holiday break, to really totally dark skies, lying virtually on our door step. The only problem could well be the unpredictable weather, as it loves to rain in Ireland 

I'm after a holiday on the Island of Sark - The world's first "Dark Sky Island"; no street lights, no cars!

[Delboy_Hog]

I'm just outside of Leeds, and though I'm colour-blind and don't know what colour Leeds is on the map, I'm willing to bet it's not a good colour!  LP really is awful here.  I'm tending to drive out and about to find better skies these days - the Malham area in North Yorkshire being my most recent good find.  Bit of a drive, and a real gamble when you're relying on a weather forecast to tell you whether the 3 hour round trip is going to be worth it...but the skies are lovely and dark, so it's definitely worth it if it is clear when you get there!

[iapa]

37 minutes ago, rockystar said:

I'm after a holiday on the Island of Sark - The world's first "Dark Sky Island"; no street lights, no cars!

Thought about it - decided I could not manage the CGEM-DX on my back unless I left the OTAs etc. behind. 

[The-MathMog]

On 2/2/2017 at 10:18, Dakaar said:

yellow is really good based on your map. i live in a red area and can get somewhere it borders a orange. i need to travel a lot further to find a yellow

i prefer to use this map

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info

Maybe I'm underestimating my spot then. There is quite a few streetlamp close by, and even a few in my view, which hinders my night-vision from probably ever establishing.
I think you would need to use both maps to accurately rate it. I don't think the map you posted, considers general light pollution scattered from say bigger cities etc, as you would need to get quite far away to make that less of a factor. But agree, that yours is probably very good to find good local observing spots!

On 2/2/2017 at 17:56, glowjet said:

Hi Mathias, I think your light pollution filter question is related to the old Sodium public street lighting, where the appropriate filter provided some relief. As far as I am aware, there is no filter which can help with the new LED public lighting. Best to get as far away from the area as possible.

Ahh right! Forgot that part, and most of the lights in my country are indeed LED. The only possible option there, would be to use, say a H-alpha filter, of course limiting the types of things you could image, right?

[Geoff_L]

On 02/02/2017 at 09:18, Dakaar said:

yellow is really good based on your map. i live in a red area and can get somewhere it borders a orange. i need to travel a lot further to find a yellow

i prefer to use this map

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info

 

+1 on lightpollutionmap.info. It shows much finer detail so that even though I live in a "yellow" area in the OP's map, my favourite dark sky site has less than 0.25 nanowatts per sq cm and shows up as a narrow corridor or relatively low light pollution within a few miles of a major city centre.

[ollypenrice]

My backyard, I'm lucky to be able to say, is in the darkest zone. Maybe the village's name is a give-away, since Etoile means star, but then there are other dark villages in the region called all sorts of things!

In fact I chose the place for astronomy so it isn't a matter of luck. When I was looking to buy a house at a dark site, though, I was amazed by how difficult it was to find one. What the map doesn't show is the potential for very local sources of LP. I visited one place in the back of beyond in which the only street light within a ten kilometre radius was beside the house. Other sources of LP include roads, so you really need to be at the end of a road to be sure cars won't flash past in a blaze of halogen. And then there's the problem of horizons. An elevated horizon to the south is no good but being in a 'crater' is better than being on a hilltop because, in mainland Europe, hilltops look down on every light for miles around. This doesn't apply to finding a temporary dark site but if buying a house you need to be sure that nobody can build within your field of view as well. All in all it is not a simple matter!

Olly