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Bortle Scale


algol

what is your site's Bortle Rating?  

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  1. 1. what is your site's Bortle Rating?



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Basically I go by what I see through the eyepiece and for the most part, it's pretty good... a lot better than what Mr. Bortle would place me at. :smiley:

Sorry, but I've never cared too much for this particular scale. Depending on what items I use as guidelines, my Starpad can be #2, #3 #4 or #5... too much of a spread to be totally accurate, JMHO.

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For me in my back garden I range from a 3.5 to 4 facing from SE through S to SW then it becomes a 4.5 to 5 as I slew towards N in towards the main part of town .I actually live on the outskirts of swindon towards junc 15 of the M4 hence the lower readings towards the south and I am lucky in as much that my garden is actually aligned N/S so my house shields most of the worst effects of light pollution But in the winter I am still able to make out most of Ursa Minor and can still pick out Polaris very easily regards Pete

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hey my sky is a 3/4 when the :smiley: & :bino2: clear and i can see it :p ,

i can make out the milky way clearly and it has lots of detail, the lower clouds are dark and when you start an evening look black like the stars are missing! M33 can be seen just and m31 is clearly an extended object about one to two thumb widths across on the sky on poor evenings. i can see most of the bright GC too.

Zodiacal Light is clear as i now know it to be the light that i remember thinking was just the sunrise. it is very bright and extends up ~60 degrees at dawn and dusk. was never very sure cause i have only watched the sun set from the farm, its never been clear any other times that i can remember :scratch: watching for another location.

before you all :) :crybaby: i will probably not get to see these dark skies till Christmas because i stay at uni in Glasgow during term and i is never clear when i go home :crybaby: :crybaby: :crybaby:

while at uni i enjoy picking out stars and guessing where the constellations are from the ten or eleven bright stars i can see, its a 9 in Glasgow's west end!

ally

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Class 9 for my back garden unfortunately, I guess I'm in the middle of industrial tyneside that makes sense, can see Mag 3-4 (on a good night) stars when there's no cloud. I used to live with a ship repair yard to the North and one the East, but the one to the North has gone now. No problem though! it just makes things more interesting.

Steve

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I would say that I was between 6 and 5...

I personally don't find this scale very good however, because some things which are at 4, also apply to me, and some of the things at 6 (such as cloud colour) seem too extreme.

Remy :smiley:

P.S I went for 6 in the end, because the Milky Way is only rarely better than what is described in 6.

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I'm with those that said this is not a very good scale. My vision is simply not good enough to split even Alcor and Mizar, much less see M22 naked eye, but my skies are certainly mag. 6 or better, with the orange dome of Phoenix killing much of my northern sky.

I'm with Helen on this one, rating my skies from 1 through 5. Hardly accurate.

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Zodiacal light from my site :smiley: no way.

Had a quick read of each class and I voted for 6 but it's probably somewhere between 5 & 6 :bino2:

I'm scouting this weekend for a darkish site within 5 miles of home and I'm not optimistic. There are some country roads to the SE heading over to Yorkshire and a layby set back from a country road would do but it would probably be filled with cars with steamy windows - I'd be asking for trouble if I arrived on scene with a telescope :oops:

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I'm not a fan of this scale.

The rating puts my site at class 7 or even 8, yet last night, I was still able to see comparisons stars for R Cyg at mag.13.8 with the Skywatcher Achromat 120mm refractor.

Using the smaller Tak scope, I was still able to see traces of the Veil Nebula, nebulosity around Merope in M45 and M1 which was located in an orange sky glow part of the sky.

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I don't think that scale is very good at all, doesn't take seeing into account which greatly affects my LP. For instance, wednesday night LP was almost non-existant as the seeing was exceptionally good, other nights it's been upto 60deg, then of course its dependent on the moon, neighbours and their piggin conservatory lights, etc.

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  • 1 month later...

The scale is not great. But I would estimate my location is 8 most nights, occasionally a 7.

If I am really lucky and the moisture in the air is low then I might get a 6 in the early hours of the morning.

Ant

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Like others with darker skies mine varies from 2 to 5 and often manages such a shift during the night depending on cloud conditions near the horizon reflecting light miles off.

In summer it never seems to get dark - or maybe I don't stay up late enough.

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Well, I thought I'd chosen my French site with care but on this scale it only rates about 4 most moonless nights (I assume we're talking about moonless nights, otherwise the scale makes no sense!). But then my eyes are getting on a bit - I could probably get M33 naked-eye if I were younger but at my age... But I do have a distinct advantage - a good three hours of dark sky between twilights even in midsummer.

As for supposedly rural Sussex (my back garden) - 6 at best.

I too wonder about the usefulness of this scale. Often, for those who image (and even visually, for telescope users with the right filters), one can get pretty good results even in terrible LP - as I've had demonstrated to me!

Anyone care to recommend a reasonable sky quality meter?

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  • 2 years later...

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