--- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
With experience, you can tell when the sky is right and when it's less than ideal pretty quickly. If an individual is compelled to categorize and rate conditions for a scientific or project-related reason, great, if not, it's neurosis or boredom.
One of the attractions of the hobby is it's technical side. Gaining competence in talking about sky conditions is one of those basic astronomy skills, like knowing the relationship between focal length, aperature and magnification, that once mastered, becomes fluid and second-nature. Like anything, if overdone it becomes compulsive and takes away from the simple enjoyment of the hobby.
Unless it's overcast and just hopeless, once at a site I've never packed up and went home because the conditions weren't optimal.
With gas prices making a trip to the dark sky site a $20-$30 proposition and light pollution ever creeping outward, it's nice to have a sense of where the dark holes are at particular sites and if what you want to look at is in one. If it's not in one, so be it, there's always something to look at at any magnitude and level of sky brightness. Like you say, you gotta keep it in perspective. - Canopus56 (Kurt) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com