Front Garden / "Public" viewing?

[nightfisher]

i some times grab my bins and have a look from the front garden but would not set up scope in the front, and back garden is near useless as high trees and buildings but on the plus side im only about ten mins drive from meltham moors

[Agelesslink]

i go outside in my yard. its pretty dark, but i think ppl think im crazy when the see me sitting in the middle of my yard at midnight. i dont have a scope for an excuse.lol

[peteftm]

Hi i'm new on here, just had a 10" skywatcher dob delivered today but don't have a garden or yard at all , just a lawned shared area out front.Need to pick up the courage to go outside or will proberbly drive to a dark site!

Pete

[planetdnb]

I'm quite spoilt with a large dark rear garden. front has a big tree and street lights so it's a no go for me!

[Jdavies]

Im lucky i live down a very quite cul de sac

[earth titan]

I've now got a nice quiet dark sky site which I travel to. Can't be too dark or too quiet.

Whenever I have tried to view, in what I thought was going to be a very quiet spot, I have had the local idots coming to see what I was doing, hurling abuse and generally destroying what I hoped would be a quiet night.

Hey ho! Live and learn!

Dread to think what would happen if I tried it in the front garden. As we are on a route back from the local pub, I couldn't be doing with the hassle, cans of Stella, chip wrappers etc.

[bish]

I used to observe from my balcony. It's only first floor, and very close to street lights, but most people either didn't see or just ignored me. If I heard drunks coming I would go inside for a bit as I didn't want to get into a loud conversation in the middle of the night. The last time I observed from my girlfriend's parents' house the neighbour came over to have a look at Saturn.

[Macavity]

Almost any "public" activity in THIS cul-de-sac seems to gather a crowd... of "experts" now. At first this was nice... but gradually the "boffin" jokes have begun to irritate. Also the nosy ONE among my neighbours seems to spend his WHOLE time "recording" my times of getting up, retiring, shopping, what I do, what I buy etc. Cheeky begger even told me he'd feel unhappy with my (hopefully imminent!) observatory... 'cos he wouldn't be able to SEE me doing my (weird?) stuff!

I think someone attributed the secret of a good neighbourliness to HIGH fences! [part serious]

[Star child]

I sometimes observe from the car parking area outisde my block of flats and i often get idiots making some comments about me being a peeping tom, i just ignore them, if they are so dumb to not notice my telescope or binoculars are pointing up into the sky its not even worth talking to them.

Me and my freind once had the police called on us when we were in the back alley doing some obeserving, this is when we were just starting getting into astronomy, suddenly this police car drove up the alley and they said that someone had reported us because they thought were spying on them, they were ok though when we explained what we were doing.

Last night/early this morning i was out trying to observe Comet Hartley when a neighbour and some of his freinds came back from the pub and were rather drunk, i could hear thgem and was thinking please just dont disturb me but they did, asked what i was looking at, i told them i was trying to observe comet 103p Hartley/2 which seemed to be TMI for them so they left me to it, which was what i wanted!

[Jdavies]

i like the feeling of viewing of the front garden for some reason

[bish]

I'm trying to move house (or rather from flat to house) and one of the biggest things for me with the garden is privacy. Not that I intend to do wierd things in my garden (unless you count standing out all night in freezing temperatures looking at faint patches of light)!

[Moonshane]

During the Venus transit though, someone called the Sheriff on me. Apparently the caller thought i had the 90mm ETX out there to spy on the horses across the road, lol.

as far as I'm concerned there's nothing worse than a horse spy. oh, sorry no got it wrong.....it's a horse fly - you're fine.

what exactly were they objecting to you looking at ??!!

some people are plain nutty. the people that complained are bad too.

I wouldn't observe in the front as there are too many lights, passing cars, streetlights etc. the back is not bad with a view of most directions except west. at least I can see things rising and going overhead. quite dark too apart from when bedroom lights come on.

[Regan]

Wouldn't attempt to view out the front, to many bulls lugs walking about the streets