• Question: wheres the best country to travel to to look at the stars at night?

    Asked by bodhag to Alan, Nick on 11 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Anywhere where you can get far away from streetlights is a good place – this is why we put many telescopes on mountains on islands in the sea, or on mountains in the desert.

      Remember, you need to be in the dark without any lights for about 10 minutes so your eyes become really sensitive. When I’m working at an observatory, my eyes become so sensitive I can see things by starlight alone.

      I love going to the Chile and Australia to see the sky. You see different constellations from home. The Milky Way is better too, down in those countries we can look towards the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      Good question! There are lots of good places to see the stars, as long as the skies are dark and you away from street lights, city lights and car lights. You can see different things in the northern and southern hemispheres because of the way the Earth rotates so the best countries are a mixture of places in the northern hemisphere (like Hawaii) or the southern hemisphere (like the Andes mountains in Chile).

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