Visit the beautiful southern sky
The following information
is a holiday impression from a visit I've made in South Africa. There was a nice
Observatory with equipment to make excellent pictures of celestial objects
visible at the Southern sky.
About the weatherconditions and the extremely
low lightpollution
The weather is normally
dry, but it could be raining for some days. I stayed 10 days in september and had 3 clear nights. The atmosphere is very
transparent and a tablemountain on a distance of 95
km was clearly visible at the horizon. Stars are normal visible to groundlevel. Canopus came up very
suddenly! The photographs below are made with telephotolenses.
The exposuretime was about 25 minutes on 1600 ASA
Kodak Panther film (with focalratio 2.8!). It's
extremely dark outside, because the first lamppost is about 25 km away. The
only light you will see, is from the stars and the milky way. (If there is no
moon) That's an unbelieveble experience: To walk
outside the building right into the milky way.
See and don't believe your
eyes the scanned photographs here below!
Southern Cross
Large Magellanic Cloud
