Where can I park outside Eugene to do astrophotography?

[Those Who Squirm]

Originally Posted by Cloudy Dayz

I have never heard of anybody doing night sky photography, from the shoulder of a road. I can't imagine the results of that being good. Why not just go camping on some free BLM land way away from city lights? Get out of the Willamette Valley. Try something in the mountains, maybe 25 or 30 miles west of Eugene.

Because I don't camp. I don't own any camping equipment. I don't want to go to that expense, because I'm not insisting on an absolutely dark, Bortle Scale 1 sky. I just want to get to a place where I can get to a noticeably darker sky than what I have at home. According to lightpollutionmap.info I live in a Bortle 5* zone, but can easily reach a Bortle 4 zone, less than 20 miles away. But as always, where can I park? There's a lumber yard in Noti that probably has a large parking lot, but it's also bound to have bright lights all over the place as an anti-theft measure.

*I really think the difference in sky darkness is probably greater than one Bortle point.

[leastprime]

Willamette Pass. Hoodoo Bowl after the ski season.
Florence on the beach, Hotel rooms are cheap this time of year.
Maybe, Junction City?

[Cloudy Dayz]

Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm

Because I don't camp. I don't own any camping equipment. I don't want to go to that expense, because I'm not insisting on an absolutely dark, Bortle Scale 1 sky. I just want to get to a place where I can get to a noticeably darker sky than what I have at home. According to lightpollutionmap.info I live in a Bortle 5* zone, but can easily reach a Bortle 4 zone, less than 20 miles away. But as always, where can I park? There's a lumber yard in Noti that probably has a large parking lot, but it's also bound to have bright lights all over the place as an anti-theft measure.

*I really think the difference in sky darkness is probably greater than one Bortle point.

Well if the location I gave you is too hard then try Scottsburg on Highway 38. Turn North at the Fire Station and drive up Wells Creek Road. There are large turnouts at 0.4 and 0.8 miles that you could park on. The one at 0.4 is still close to the town lights, but the one at at 0.8 is completely surrounded by forest and should be pretty dark. The road is narrow but well maintained. So you should be able to drive in and out in the dark, if you are careful.

[Cloudy Dayz]

Originally Posted by leastprime

Willamette Pass. Hoodoo Bowl after the ski season.
Florence on the beach, Hotel rooms are cheap this time of year.
Maybe, Junction City?

Junction City and Florence are lit up like Christmas Trees. Willamette Pass might work if the ski resort lights are not on.

[jjpop]

Seems like Finley Wildlife Refuge would be pretty dark. If you're there after hours you can certainly just park off the road at the gate. But it would be more like a 40 minute drive.

[Hawk J]

Drive along the Umpqua River. There are unpopulated areas.

[Metlakatla]

You could also drive up to the summit on 126 going to Florence and park in the Walton Post Office parking lot.

[Those Who Squirm]

Originally Posted by Cloudy Dayz

Eugene is a bright lights city.

Not compared to where I used to live before I moved here! Escondido in suburban San Diego, and before that in totally urban L.A.

I really think you need to get away from the city and go camping in the mountains, if you want to get good pictures. Here is one suggestion I can think off. Take a look at the map link. It's a massive clearcut area about 35 miles southwest of Eugene. It's not very pretty, but since there are no trees it should give you a good view of the sky. Check it out.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Euge...520691!1m0!3e0

This sounds promising, and so does Walton. Unfortunately, I see that by the next dark moon, dusk won't fully end until after 10pm, making a quick after-dinner outing hard to manage. The long days really sneaked up on me this year. I'll have to wait until we go back to standard time, most likely.

Zumwalt Park, on the far shore of Fern Ridge, looked very promising until I found out that it closes right around sunset next month.

[Those Who Squirm]

Originally Posted by A. Roz Mar

Cemetaries are good too if they are out of town.

Oak Ridge Cemetery is only a few miles from me and it's one Bortle level better according to lightpollutionmap.info.

My guess is that the improvement would be even better, since online light pollution maps can't take into consideration every individual light source. I live in a gated community with street lights; there aren't very many of them, but they're very bright. Unless the cemetery is lit up at night, there would be nothing like that over there. I expect there will still be considerable sky glow, particularly facing east or at low sky altitudes, but the sky should be noticeably darker.

[Those Who Squirm]

Originally Posted by Cloudy Dayz

I have never heard of anybody doing night sky photography, from the shoulder of a road. I can't imagine the results of that being good.

Assuming the shoulder is wide enough to be safe, and there's little traffic, why not? I tried it once in California, at a site where there was only about one car about every fifteen minutes. It is true that I didn't get good results, but that was mainly because I hadn't brought my tripod because it was a last minute thing, and I hadn't expected to be there. All I could do was simply set the timer on the camera and placed it on the roof of my car pointing straight up, or on a windshield to face out at an angle. Moreover, I didn't have an appropriate lens yet, and was using the 18 - 55mm kit lens that came with the camera.