At 06:38 PM 19/11/2001 -0700, Daniel J. Mitchell wrote:
>> You need a dark sky to take pictures of stars and meteors. Sky glow
>> will pretty much wash everything out.
>
> Well, it _looked_ dark to me! <grin> (I know, I know.. but compared to the
>glow over Calgary behind me, the sky really did look pretty darned dark. I
>guess I should have gone a lot further away, but driving around unknown bits
>of country, in the dark, trying to get as far as possible from civilisation,
>was rather more than I could face at 3am..)
>
> Is there any sort of good objective way to know how dark the sky really is?
>I couldn't see the milky way, I suppose, which suggests that there's some
>glow -- but I could see a _lot_ of stars, which fooled me.
Dan:
Your best bet is to contact the local Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
chapter/centre. Calgary's Web page is here:
http://www.syz.com/rasc/
I don't know if there are any standard deep-sky (i.e., really REALLY dark)
sites for the Calgary centre, but the Edmonton club has several within about an
hour's drive of the city. Two of the better ones (one of which is considered a
really good deep-sky observation site) are talked about on this page:
http://www.edmontonrasc.com/blackfoot.html
The Blackfoot one is considered the best generally available. I've been out
there a couple of times, and it's awesomely dark (though still not as good as
in the Rockies, ferinstance). I'd be surprised if Calgary had no equivalents
-- I know there's a location near Caroline, Alberta, but I don't know of any
others. Mind you, you're only a 45-minute drive away from the Rockies...
Garth
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