Heard a podcast host say 'you can't see the Milky Way from 80% of North America' and it got me thinking

They were talking about light pollution and mentioned that places like Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania are some of the last dark sky spots. I looked it up and the Bortle scale map for my area is awful, which explains why my galaxy shots are so noisy. Has anyone had good results from a Class 4 Bortle zone, or do I really need to drive 5 hours to a darker site?

3 comments

3 Comments

logan6584d ago

Ugh, that stat is depressing but it tracks. I've shot from a Bortle 4 zone before and it's a huge step up from the suburbs. You can definitely get the core with a decent tracker and fast lens, but the background skyglow is still there. For really clean shots, yeah, you still gotta make that drive to a 2 or better.

jamie_adams4d ago

Guess we traded stars for streetlights, didn't we?

keith_bennett4d ago

My local park went from a Bortle 5 to an 8 in just a decade, which really shows what @logan658 means. We didn't just trade stars, we sold them off cheap for a bit more sidewalk light. It's a quiet loss you only notice when you try to look up.