We have used school ovals, golf courses, vineyards, tennis courts, private car parks, hotel rooftops, private driveways, private airstrips, and "the back paddock" before.

The ideal location:

• Isn't overshadowed by buildings or large trees.
  
  
• Isn't afflicted by outdoor lighting that cannot be turned off. Including streetlights, and motion-activated lighting.
  
  
• Isn't metres away from any neighbours who may be trying to sleep during our tour.
  
  
• Isn't subject to a lock-out or curfew time before we can finish packing up after tour.
  
  
• Can be driven onto with our car. We're not young anymore and our telescopes are heavy, so we don't want to carry them a long way.
  
  
• Won't be sprayed by an irrigation system while we're there.
  Reminder: many ovals, golf courses and sports fields operate automated sprinklers at night.
  
  
• Isn't overgrown with weeds or long grass.
  
  
• Doesn't have any tripping or falling hazards, manure blobs, soft/slippery/boggy surfaces, or steep slopes.
  
  
• Doesn't have livestock or vehicles trying to pass through while we're there.
  
  
• Has an unobstructed view of the sky, especially to the south.
  
  
• Is more than 5km from the nearest part of any commercial airport runway (or helipad) that is routinely used at night.
  Laser pointers can't be used near an active airport so we'll have to use our alternative pointer.
  
  
• We have permission to be there.
  
  

Another reminder: using Public outdoor places (such as parks, playgrounds, picnic areas, roadsides) generally requires a permit from the relevant local authorities. In many places these permits can take months (and $$$) to obtain. Operating without a permit risks large fines and jeopardises our future activities.

• We've done tours where our narrative had to be translated in real-time into other languages, such as Auslan or Mandarin. Let us know if this is happening for your group and please have your translator identify themselves when we arrive.
  
  
• Most venues should have their own seats we can use, but you're welcome to bring your own portable chair or a sit-on walking frame. We'll bring our wooden benches if we already know your tour venue has no seats.
  Your kids may prefer to lie down on your picnic blanket instead.
  
  
• We bring free-standing stepladders with grab rails to use with our telescopes. Ideal for keeping your balance and getting your eye into the correct alignment with our telescope eyepieces. Also good for holding up kids to see through our telescopes.
  
  
• Let us know if anyone in your booking must sit when they're looking through our telescopes. We'll contact you to discuss the details and how we can help. So far we've had guests with arthritis, multiple sclerosis, post polio syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, various hip knee & ankle problems, amputees, strokes, recovering from recent surgeries, and wheelchair users.
  And if you were healthy when you booked and then got injured, also let us know.
  
  
• We've had many guests who are vision impaired.
  
  
• If you have a certified carer (Companion Card holder) they get free entry. Please mention when booking.
  
  
• Assistance Animals and Guide Dogs in harness or on leash are welcome, but for everyone's safety (including ours) please keep all other animals away from our activities.
  
  

If you're a family group then kids under 5 are free if accompanied by their paying parent or adult relative. In our experience babies will sleep through the tour if they're (1) warm and sheltered from wind, and (2) they can hear or feel their parent. Preschoolers vary: some will fall asleep immediately, others will stay awake and sometimes be fully participating. Including asking us profound and interesting questions.

Although we have police clearances (and grandchildren of our own) we're not professional child minders and you're responsible for your kid's safety and behaviour. School groups should include at least one supervising adult per 15 students.

Earliest starting times for a night tour vary according to the season. During December-January it's not dark until about 9:30pm. During June-July it's dark from about 6:30pm. Younger children may benefit from having an afternoon nap beforehand.

Assistance Animals and Guide Dogs in harness or on leash are welcome, but for everyone's safety please keep all other animals away from our activities.

Let us know as soon as possible before your tour or event is due to start. If you cancel:

• More than 72 hours prior to start, you get a full refund of your deposit or prepayment.
  
  
• Between 72 and 48 hours prior to start, you get refunded half of your deposit or prepayment.
  
  
• Less than 48 hours prior to start, no refund. Also no refund for anyone in your group who fails to turn up.
  
  

Consider postponing your tour or event to a later date instead of cancelling. If it's a short wait we'll retain your deposit to pay for the new date.
If you paid us by credit / debit card then any refund will be made to the same card. This normally takes 5 to 10 business days. If you paid us by Bank Transfer then we'll need your bank transfer details to do a refund.

Usually this is because of cloudy or stormy weather, unless your booking specifies an indoors presentation as an alternative. If it's a weather cancellation, and you didn't want an indoors presentation instead, then you get a full refund.
We may also cancel bookings if factors beyond our control make it unfeasible or dangerous to operate the tour. For example natural disasters....or we're ill. If this happens then you get a full refund.

NOBODY can reliably forecast evening cloud cover before the actual date of a night tour. We will decide before 2pm on the day and we'll send a text message to your mobile phone with our decision. If you haven't heard from us by 3pm on the day please contact us.

If you paid us by credit / debit card then your refund will be made to the same card. This normally takes 5 to 10 business days. If you paid us by Bank Transfer then we'll need your bank transfer details to do your refund.

Our outdoor activities are always Weather Permitting. Indoor activities are not (unless severe weather or bushfires close the roads). If you're a school group or an event organiser; ask us to include a Plan B indoors alternative in your quote.

The Fleurieu Peninsula has a lot of micro climates and localised weather phenomena. And it's usually different from Adelaide weather. We have 30+ years of direct lived experience with Fleurieu weather. And during the last decade we've tested dozens of different weather forecasting services, weather models, weather websites & apps. Our conclusion:



Our tour preparations include reading multiple weather & cloud forecasts, and examining the latest weather satellite images. We will try to notify you via a message to your mobile phone before 2pm on the day of tour; to let you know if it's going ahead (or not). If you haven't heard from us by 3pm then contact us.

If clouds interrupt a night tour in progress, we'll wait for them to clear and then resume the tour. Or look at something else in a different direction. We have occasionally started tours later than scheduled if we know sunset clouds are going to clear away. Or earlier than scheduled if we know a clear evening will become cloudy later.

If we're outdoors please dress like you're going to the South Pole regardless of the weather forecast. It's easy to remove layers to cool down if you're too hot. It's impossible to warm up using any clothing that you left at home.

All tours and events are by prior booking only and require a deposit payment. We've discovered the hard way that people who don't pre-pay a deposit sometimes don't bother to tell us they've changed their plans. The remaining payment can be made on the day if the weather lets us run your tour. We accept:

• Cash payment (in person only, exact amount preferred).
  
  
• EFTPOS credit & debit cards issued by Australian banks and credit unions.
  
  
• MasterCard and Visa credit & debit cards.
  
  
• NFC mobile wallets -- Apple Pay , Google Pay , Samsung Pay.
  
  
• China UnionPay, Japan JCB, Discover / Diners Club, and American Express cards.
  
  
• Payment by invoice; if you're an Australian school, business or organisation with an ABN.
  
  

Costs will depend on our travel distance (from Yankalilla) and the number of people attending. Contact us for a quote.

When you're away from urban light pollution the biggest factor for the visibility of stars is the phase of the Moon. A full moon will blot out all but the brightest ~10% of stars visible from the Fleurieu. Most of these brightest stars are found within a band of sky that's almost aligned with the Milky Way. And a bright Moon also illuminates any mist or haze that's present -- blotting out even more stars.

One evening a few years ago we took a pair of photos illustrating the effects of a 3/4 full Moon on an Outback night sky. We've also done a long term project with our Sky Quality Meter to calculate the effects of the Moon's phase on the visibility of stars in urban and rural skies.

So if you're wanting to see lots of stars in a rural night sky then pick an evening when there's no bright Moon. Unfortunately if you're within an urban area then the phase of the Moon doesn't matter.

Earliest starting times for a night tour vary according to the season. During December-January it's not dark until about 9:30pm. During June-July it's dark from about 6:30pm.

Some evening visibilities in the Fleurieu Peninsula's sky:

• Southern Cross -- visible all year, but very low on the southern horizon from late November to early February.
  
  
• Proxima Centauri -- same as the Southern Cross, but more easily seen (with a large telescope) between late February and early October. Difficult to see if there's a bright Moon.
  
  
• The Large & Small Magellanic Clouds -- visible all year but more easily seen during our summer months. Blotted out by a bright Moon.
  
  
• Andromeda galaxy -- we get a poor view of it during November, very low in our northern sky. Blotted out by a bright Moon.
  
  
• Orion's Saucepan -- mid November to mid April.
  
  
• Pleiades star cluster -- early November to mid March.
  
  
• Centre of the Milky Way -- late April to early November, passing overhead during our winter months. Blotted out by a bright Moon.
  
  
• The dark Emu -- the "head" end becomes visible from early February, then all of it is visible from mid May to late October. Blotted out by a bright Moon.
  
  
• Carina Nebula -- early January to mid August. Blotted out by a bright Moon; although our telescope can alleviate some of this problem with a filter.
  
  
• NGC 253 galaxy -- late August to mid February, almost overhead during November. Blotted out by a bright Moon.
  
  

If something's not visible in the evenings then try a different time of night. For example if you want to see the Southern Cross high in the sky in mid summer then look for it after midnight.

The Moon and planets are always changing position. So the "best time" to see them always changes too.

Yes. And you can even do it with most mobile phones if you follow three essential rules:

1. Get out of town.
   Light pollution and bright moonlight are both enemies of astrophotography. If you can't see stars with your eyes then your phone camera probably won't detect them either. And if it did, then your images would still need lots of processing afterwards and the final result would still look bad. So unless you specifically want to show the effects of light pollution (or bright moonlight) in your images, then get out of town to somewhere with a darker sky.



2. Put your phone onto a tripod that can aim the phone's camera at the sky.
   It's tempting to just hold your phone at arm's length above your head. But this will produce inferior images (and tired arms) because almost nobody can hold their phone steady like this for long enough. Even if there's no wind. The cleverest image processing can't do much if your stars are random squiggles in your original images.
   
   Test that your tripod won't fall over when your phone is looking up. Some selfie / vlogger tripods are designed only for horizontal viewing. And lightweight tripods may blow over if it's windy.
   
   If your phone is supported by a tripod then the camera should see a non-wobbly view of the stars, which enables it to auto-focus properly. Tap on a bright star on the preview screen to focus. Many newer smartphones can do time exposures with their generic camera app if (a) it's dark, and (b) they can sense that they're not moving.
   
   • iPhones in the dark auto-switch their camera into Night mode, with a default 5 to 30 second time exposure (depending on phone model).
     
   • Samsungs default to a 10 to 30 second time exposure (depending on phone model), after they're switched into Night mode.
     
   • Google Pixels default to a 10 second exposure when switched into Night Sight mode. But if the phone is kept motionless it automatically switches from Night Sight into Astrophotography mode, which then allows time exposures up to 4 minutes. The Aurora photo in our gallery was taken with an old Pixel 4a.
     
   • The more expensive models of most other phone brands copy one of these three behaviours.
     
   • Some cheap phones' generic camera apps won't work at all in the dark. You will need to install a better app.



3. Switch the camera flash OFF.
   If the flash is On or Auto then your camera will default to an exposure time of 0.1 second or less. Which is not long enough to photograph stars. Also the light from your flash is effective out to about ten metres from the camera. The nearest star (other than the Sun) that your phone camera can see is about 41 trillion kilometres away. The light from your camera flash would take nearly nine years to travel there & back; and any returning light would be totally undetectable.
   So using the flash during astrophotography does only three things:
   • Wastes your phone battery.
     
   • Produces images of "black" rather than "stars".
     
   • Makes you look clueless....

If you don't have a tripod you can use ours during the tour. We've also got an adaptor for our telescope, that we can use to take great images of the Moon with your phones, like the ones in our gallery.
Of course if you're keen on doing astrophotography with your phone then it's well worth installing a better camera app for it; one that lets you control every camera setting. And as every good photographer knows, take notes of anything that didn't work, as well as what did work, for a particular image.
Also be aware that Google Photos (and many other backup-my-images-to-online-storage services) only stores a reduced-resolution or downsized copy of your images. If you want an unaltered backup copy of your original images, do a file transfer via direct connection to your computer or memory stick.

This is how we use the information you provide to us:

• Your name, so that we know who made the booking. And if you're booking on behalf of a school or business or organisation, their name (and ABN).
  
  
• Your mobile phone number so that we can notify you if your tour is cancelled or going ahead. We generally do this as a text message to your phone. If we can't send a text message to the phone number then we will email you instead.
  
  
• Your booking confirmation, receipts, invoices and other tour specific information are sent to your email address. Your email address might also be used to notify you of a tour cancellation if there's a problem with your mobile phone number on the day.
  
  
• If you're paying by credit or debit card; our payment processor shows us the card holder's name, the card's last four digits, your bank's name, and the $ amount & date & time of payment. For example Jane Smith, ANZ MasterCard ***1234, $100, 22 Jan 2024 @ 10:30am. This is standard procedure used by all reputable payment processors to identify transactions.
  
  
• If you're entitled to a refund and you paid us by bank transfer, then we'll need your Bank Transfer details (name of account holder, BSB, account number) to do the refund.