Who doesn’t like to see the stars? Everyone looks at amazing pictures taken by professional photographers of the milky way and dreams of one day being able to see something like this. What if I told you it’s possible to see the milky way with your own eyes. In this place it really is, it takes some time for your eyes to adjust about 30m but then you will be able to see something unique.
Dark Skies
This is one of those special places where you have perfect conditions to watch the starts, with very little light pollution the sky here really is dark 🙂
This is the first certified “Starlight Tourism Destination” and it extends over an area of about 10000 square kilometres, unbelievable. Several municipalities joined the efforts to minimize light pollution by changing city lights while reducing their use.
The equipment in the observatory is top notch and we were able to see planets and deep sky objects, that was quite impressive.
Is it child-friendly?
We think so, at least the night observation, our son loved it and he talked about it for months. After the observation, we did follow Miguel’s suggestion for a cool spot to take some astrophotography, and that was not a good program for him, you try to have a three-year-old wait for hours so you can get a night timelapse, not going to happen.
How to find the best date/location for night photography?
We used a program called Stellarium, it’s free and you can get it here:
https://stellarium.org/
with it, you can go to any location and date to see how the stars align, very useful if you want to get a photo of the milky way.
We also used a free app called Skyview lite to find the milky way on site so we would know where to point the camera, in case you don’t want to wait until your eyes adjust.
How much for a tour?
We paid €15 each for the night observation, but you should contact Miguel of Dark Skies using the website’s form or Dark skies social media, we reach out using Instagram and we set up our tour using DM.
They have other activities and we are certainly going back for the night tour by canoe, it seems to be something we will enjoy.
How much for a tour?
We paid €15 each for the night observation, but you should contact Miguel of Dark Skies using the website’s form or Dark skies social media, we reach out using Instagram and we set up our tour using DM.
They have other activities and we are certainly going back for the night tour by canoe, it seems to be something we will enjoy.
Where is it?