The Best Dark Sky Sites in Australia for Astrophotography

Australia is the opposite problem to Britain. The population sits on the coastal fringe and almost everything behind it is dark, so finding a dark sky is easy. The real questions are how far you want to drive and what you want overhead when you get there.

The second half of that question matters more here than it does in the northern hemisphere, because the southern sky has the better targets: the Magellanic Clouds, Eta Carinae, Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae, and the galactic core passing high overhead rather than low along the horizon.

Warrumbungle National Park, New South Wales

Australia’s first Dark Sky Park, and still the one with the most infrastructure around it. Coonabarabran calls itself the astronomy capital of Australia with some justification: Siding Spring Observatory is on the ridge above the park.

About six hours from Sydney. Facilities, camping, and an active astronomy community nearby, which helps when something breaks at 2am.

Suits: anyone wanting a dark sky without going somewhere remote. Good for a first serious trip.

River Murray International Dark Sky Reserve, South Australia

Certified in 2019, covering the Swan Reach area about two hours from Adelaide. The closest certified reserve to a major city in Australia, so it is the practical choice for South Australians rather than a destination in itself.

Suits: repeat visits. Two hours is close enough for a weeknight.

Kosciuszko / Snowy Mountains, New South Wales

High altitude and cold, which are both good for imaging. Thinner atmosphere means steadier seeing and lower sky brightness, and the cold keeps sensor noise down without a cooler working hard.

Suits: planetary and lunar work, where seeing dominates. Bring more clothing than you think.

Nullarbor and the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia

Remote, very dark, and an open horizon in every direction. This is Bortle 1 country.

Suits: wide-field Milky Way work, and anyone who wants the Magellanic Clouds properly high with no gradient at all. Plan to be self-sufficient: carry fuel and water, and expect no phone signal.

Central Australia, Northern Territory

Around Alice Springs and the West MacDonnell Ranges. Very dark, very dry, and the galactic core passes almost overhead in winter. Dry air means fewer nights lost to dew, which matters more in practice than most guides suggest.

Suits: Milky Way core images. Winter (June to August) is the season.

Tasmania

Dark skies close to population, plus the aurora australis. Tasmania’s latitude gives it aurora chances that mainland sites do not have.

Suits: aurora and nightscape work. There is more cloud than in the mainland interior, so watch the forecasts rather than planning around a fixed week.

What to shoot from the southern hemisphere

If you have come from northern-hemisphere tutorials, the target list is different, and in my view mostly better:

• The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Satellite galaxies, big and bright, with the Tarantula Nebula inside the LMC. The north has nothing like them.
• Eta Carinae. Large, bright, and detailed at almost any focal length.
• Omega Centauri and 47 Tucanae. The two best globular clusters in the sky, both southern.
• The Coalsack and the Southern Cross. Dark nebula work, which needs a properly dark sky to be worth attempting.
• The galactic core, high overhead in winter, rather than at 20 degrees altitude through the worst of the atmosphere.

A practical note on gradients

A Bortle 1 site does more than show fainter things. Your gradients nearly vanish, and gradients are what make a stacked image hard to finish. A frame from a dark site needs far less background modeling, and what modeling it does need is a gentle plane rather than a strong dome with a bright corner.

If you drive eight hours to the Nullarbor, that is the difference you will notice when you process the data, more than the extra magnitude of depth.

Whatever you shoot it with, Akastroid measures the gradient in your frames and reports what it found, which is one way to see what the drive bought you.

If you are shooting from home instead: most nights are not dark-site nights. See what to image from a light-polluted sky, how removing light-pollution gradients works on a stacked image, and what deep-sky stacking software for Mac, Windows and Linux does with a session from either kind of sky.