CityDeepSky:About

Motivation

Shortly after purchasing my first serious optical telescope, I became aware of the fact that there were few easily accessible lists of deep sky objects that were visible from inside the light polluted environs of a large city. This hadn't been an issue since before I purchased my optical my work was 1) primarily in the radio and 2) I had access to a 14" telescope at the club observatory which was in a darker site than my house. Though I still have access to the 14" scope (I'm the observatory director after all) I find it more convenient to set up in my back yard than the 45-60 minute commute out to the club observatory. The problem is that even though I live in the suburbs, I still have hideous light pollution (8-9 on the Bortle Scale) to contend with. So in May of 2008 I started this list.

In January of 2009 I migrated this list off of my blog at evilscientist.ca]as the wiki format works much better for a project of this type. It also allows for greater collaboration with other astronomers over the list.

The List

You can look at this wiki in a couple of ways. First there's the canonical list, this is the the "official" City Deep Sky Project list of dark sky items. This list is maintained by me, Jason Nishiyama. That being said, this is a wiki after all and other people may from time to time report their observations.

These observations may or may not be on the canonical list but are available for use here on the wiki. Which is another way of looking at this site: as a place to compare notes with other astronomers and try to see what they've seen from their non-dark sites. If enough people from various city locations can see an object, it may end up on the canonical list, even if I can't see it from my site.

Also objects that failed to make it to the list will be here (an improvement over the old blog list) so people know what objects that, at the least, I was unable to see from my backyard here in Calgary.

So enjoy the site and clear skies!