Seeking the Darkness

Part of The Plan is finding suitable sights for astrophotography. Unfortunately you cannot know everything until you get out there, but some things are important, we are looking for a relatively flat dark sight. Flat can be roughly determined via looking at images on Google Maps. Dark however is interesting, I have been evaluating several sites for there suitability when I came across this:

This is a map of the light pollution in the lower 48 states. On its own its not that interesting but if you pair it with Google Earth you now have the ultimate tool for finding dark skies. The KMZ file for Google Earth can be found here. (Thanks to the Santa Cruz Astronomy club.)  The interesting result is that I have looked at a few sights for our second expedition, after the all up test at Alamo Lake state park. The options are as follows:

Painted Rock Petroglyph Site - No GOOD (LP)

33° 01’ 23.26” N

113° 02’ 58.65” W

Elev: 584ft

Hot Well Dunes - (Good LP)

32° 31’ 26” N

109° 25’ 36” W

Elev: 3452ft

Alamo Lake Camp Area E -(Good LP)

34° 15’ 22.82” N

113° 33’ 41.08” W

Elev: 1245ft

Navajo National Monument Campground - (Good LP)

36° 41’ 9.77” N

110° 32’ 27.13”W

Elev: 7533ft

Where LP stands for Light Pollution. Please if you are interested in joining one of these expeditions let me know.