I've traveled a lot in this general latitude so I've never had the experience of a vastly different pole position. When I was much farther north (New York, Canada) I was younger and wasn't really looking at the stars ever. It'll be interesting to go north to, say, Seattle one day and see the north star way high in the sky. I shoulda told my wife last year to look, she was in Spokane for a conference (I couldn't afford to come with ).
Corran,
Check out the website of the Pine Mountain Observatory which is run by the University of Oregon. My wife and I were near it one summer night years ago, and the views of the stars with our binoculars were spectacular. I said "near" because we were late heading up to the observatory, but were reluctant to drive all the way there with our headlights on. So we just stopped on the road and broke out the binoculars. The drier air east of the Cascades gives that area great star views.
I am out on the Olympic Peninsula, and there are some dark areas here also, especially in Olympic National Park. The whole Peninsula is very scenic, and Port Townsend is a popular destination. But you will have to put up with our whining if the summer temperature gets near or above 80 degrees. Our summers from July through September are close to what you experience in October. Originally from South Carolina, with a long time in Northern Virginia, I found I adapted immediately to temperatures in the Northwest.
Keith
80 degrees! Haha! My hike up the mountain was near 95 F and high humidity. That humid air makes viewing mostly a bust in the summer here, but winters are a bit clearer. I am lucky that our neighbors mostly keep lights off at night, and on a clear winter night I can typically see Andromeda unaided. I often stay up late and sometimes go out in the cul-de-sac with my high-power binocs and look at stuff for a bit since I can see pretty much 360 degrees, over the treeline anyway.
I enjoyed looking at some of the pics on the Pine Mountain Observatory website. The university I used to work at had one of the largest telescopes in the southeast, and they often had open public events, but it was on campus and not the best for viewing due to light pollution. I will have to look for some observatories to visit next time I go out west.
Pali - nice color, and I like the city scene.
Fun photos, Bryan. You can do color, too!
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
It's fun to photograph outside one's norm.
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
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