Hi everyone! Just for fun—and hopefully to create a useful reference for the future—what are some good suburban towns around the world that are ideal for backyard astrophotography?
As a starting point, let’s say the location/town should have around Bortle 3 skies and averageing 100–150 clear nights per year.
Do you currently live in a place like this? Or would you consider moving to a town that fits these criteria for the sake of both lifestyle and astrophotography?
Cheers and clear skies!
In my country, a lot of small towns in the Atacama Desert are like that, or better. However, most of them, are not the best place to live.
Ancient.Photon · Feb 18, 2026, 09:33 PM
Hi everyone! Just for fun—and hopefully to create a useful reference for the future—what are some good suburban towns around the world that are ideal for backyard astrophotography?
As a starting point, let’s say the location/town should have around Bortle 3 skies and averageing 100–150 clear nights per year.
Do you currently live in a place like this? Or would you consider moving to a town that fits these criteria for the sake of both lifestyle and astrophotography?
Cheers and clear skies!
I suspected it’s on the lower end of the clear nights per year, but suprisingly not. Oologah, Oklahoma, and any town surrounding 30-100 miles north (E or W, doesnt matter much) of it have pretty good skies with plenty of clear nights, and consistently decent seeing from my experience, I average 1.5-2” FWHM consistently, with dozens of nights at my sampled resolution’s limit. (Probably due to jetstream being either way north or south of it, even if OK’s notorious for storms). Ontop of that, great access to Tulsa. Some of the darker skies you can find close to a bigger city plus lower cost of living relative to other states. Claremore is decent-ish too, but I’ve noticed that the light pollution is increasing by the year due to expansion projects and “modernization” of street and parking-lot lights from older sodiums and such to LED’s.
A lot of the towns in Central Oregon, at least the smaller ones, or just outside them can be Bortle 2-3 with good seeing (1.5-2.0). The downside is that it is only in the summer for the most part and sometimes gets smoky in late summer.
I am about 5 miles East of a town of around 10 K but there is nothing in the other three directions for a hundred+ miles so get Bortle 3 or better as long as I don’t point toward the town.
Sealake and St Arnauds in Victoria australia the surrounding areas get very dark, spose to be bortal 1 according to these lp maps on the internet. Really great for visual and great for photo (:
I’m in the northern part of NH and my town, Jackson, is surrounded on three sides by national forest, and the town itself is 75% national forest, so pretty dark, Bortle 3. I get a fair number of clear nights, but it’s northern New England, so rarely stable and doesn’t help that the windiest, worst weather spot on earth (literally) is about 8 miles away….. Anyhow, no such thing as a full night’s sleep; always checking for clouds, or lack thereof…. The biggest negative, though, is the seeing. I’ve never had it better than 2.5” and anything below 3” is rare.
Cheers,
Scott
thank you for your responses. I’m based in the US, in central Indiana, in a moderately sized town. My backyard is around bortle 5.5, and we probably get 40–50 clear nights/year or even fewer. Relocating solely for astrophotography isn’t realistic, at least for me due to other life considerations, but it will certainly be a much higher priority when I do decide to move.
Nicolas Molina · Feb 19, 2026 at 12:05 AM
In my country, a lot of small towns in the Atacama Desert are like that, or better. However, most of them, are not the best place to live.
Agreed. I immediately thought of Vicuna (in Chile) when I saw this post, but I don’t know what it would be like to live there so I didn’t offer it as a serious suggestion. In my experience, the skies over San Juan de Atacma aren’t all that great compared to other regions of the Atacma so there’s almost certainly a trade off between where it might be nice to live and where the skies are the best.
- John
Bill McLaughlin · Feb 19, 2026 at 03:58 AM
A lot of the towns in Central Oregon, at least the smaller ones, or just outside them can be Bortle 2-3 with good seeing (1.5-2.0). The downside is that it is only in the summer for the most part and sometimes gets smoky in late summer.
I am about 5 miles East of a town of around 10 K but there is nothing in the other three directions for a hundred+ miles so get Bortle 3 or better as long as I don’t point toward the town.
Well…I love living in central Oregon, but my telescopes are in Chile and for a good reason. When it’s good in Oregon, it can be quite good, but that’s relatively rare—mostly during the early and later summer. The smoke during the summer and the long stretches of overcast during the winter seriously limit the number of useable nights.
- John
John Hayes · Feb 19, 2026, 04:20 PM
Well…I love living in central Oregon, but my telescopes are in Chile and for a good reason.
Agreed! That is why I also have a remote site in California. Not Chile but much better than Oregon, both for weather and seeing and still within not too bad driving distance (1-2 days).
If I just talk about the US, so generally small suburban towns of southern California and accompanying states of Texas, newMexico, Arizona, Utah and maybe Colorado would be better atleast in terms of number of clear skies per year (with good seeing) ?