Some tips for dealing with a local site of dark sky for a few days.
While I do a lot of imaging from my backyard, I try to get to my local dark sky site for a few days once a month during the new moon. This means packing up my circus of equipment, taking it on the road and camping out in an isolated area with beautiful clear skies and maybe a few friends for company. As fun as this can be, there are a few things to be mindful of to keep yourself safe when you’re far away from it all. If you run into problems, help may not be that easy to get depending on what the problem is.
First, if you’re planning to camp out in the wilderness, whether its in an RV or roughing it in a tent make, sure you’re prepared. Know ahead of time all aspects of the site you’re going to; the location area you’re planning to stay in with good unobstructed views of the night sky.
Also make sure that where you’re planning to set up isn’t in a geographically challenged area like a flood plain that is prone to water runoff. If you’re in an area frequented by animals of all types, you’ll need to take that into account as well. And certainly not least of the issues you should consider if you’re roughing it in a tent is where and how you will need to take care of your individual business, especially if there are no bathroom facilities nearby.
You’ll need to have a solid first aid kit that can cover all of the most common problems you could encounter including if someone else either in your group or a person nearby or passing through suffers an injury. You may also want to consider using a satellite GPS device to be able to contact help as cell service is probably going to be unreliable.
To state the obvious, you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of food and water to cover the length of your stay. Water will be especially important if you’re going to be at altitude. Dehydration can sneak up on you pretty quickly if you’re not paying attention. As for food, it should be pretty uncomplicated. There are plenty of package food options to use and some good creative recipes use nothing more than a backpacking or camping stove. Limit the amount of foods you bring that require cooling or refrigeration unless you have a reliable means for doing this. Keeping yourself well fed will require at least as much pre planning as you do for an observing or imaging session. And you should always remember that you need to be able to pack everything out that you brought in which specifically means any trash you’ve created.
Ok, now we really get down to business. If you’re set up for observing you may or may not need power but if you’re trying to get the perfect image data of NGC 6543, you’re going to need to figure out how to reliably have it to use. There are several options to do this (I use deep cycle marine batteries) in a remote setting and you’ll need to make sure you’ll have enough power to cover all of your needs for the night. You’ll also need to consider how to renew your power system (hint: solar panels work pretty well) if you’re spending more than one night of fun. You’ll also need to have some spare parts like cables, fuses and batteries and some standard tools like pliers, screwdrivers and allen tools because if/when something goes wrong, you’ll have a major problem if you’re not prepared.
Stay safe, have a lot of fun if you decide to go after these targets, get your neighbors to turn off their lights at night and convince them to join in the fun….
Image Credits -
Death Valley National Park
NGC 1365; Telescope Live 1-Click Bundled Data - Processed in PixInsight
NGC 6543 Cat’s Eye Nebula; Telescope Live 1-Click Bundled Data - Processed in PixInsight
NGC 2024 Flame Nebula; Telescope Live 1-Click Bundled Data - Processed in PixInsight
| Death Valley National Park |
| Death Valley National Park |
| Death Valley National Park |
This blog post was originally published in our Telescope Live Community.
The Community represents Telescope Live's virtual living room, where people exchange ideas and questions around astrophotography and astronomy.
Join the conversation now to find out more about astrophotography and to improve your observation and post-processing skills!