Night sky, Wondai, Australia There’s very little light pollution here and a perfectly clear sky tonight. This is simply an iPhone image of the Milky Way. I propped the iPhone against a post to steady it and it automatically took a two second exposure, which I lightened in the iPhone photo app.
On the light pollution map online it shows Allies creek state forest as extremley dark without any light pollution. If you travel slightly northwest from Wondai looks like it is about a 1 -2 hour drive. Wondai is slightly lit up with light on the light pollution map
I visited Queensland some years ago and stayed in a house in a very remote place. One thing I noticed was how quickly the darkness came on in the evening. It went from day to night in a couple of minutes. There were lots of trees near the house and the flying foxes would create a racket each night as they woke up and flew off in their hundreds in search of food.
The way you can tell if you are in a good dark zone is when you can see the Milky Way touch down on the horizon. In a sighty lit up zone the light on the horizon will wash that part of the milky way out and you only will see the milky way when you look up at the sky and not towards the horizon
That's how it is at my house. I see the Milky Way stretch across the sky above me, but not all the way down to the horizons.
This is my own gyroplane, a Sport Copter Vortex, being flown in this video by a friend and its prior owner. I’m not ready to fly it yet myself but this is what I’m training to fly:
One more week in Australia for me, friends, I fly home July 10th. Hopefully I’ll get back to Virginia before any events preclude international travel
