> DARKEST SKY IN EUROPE
This is the beginning of my research on how dark the sky could be and what is benefit of a dark sky for astrophotography. I was inspired from those 2 sites. First one presents mathematical model of how dark the sky is. Orange is for very polluted sky, for yellow – you do not see the milky way, for green – sky is polluted of some degree up to the zenith, for blue – there is a shining at the horizon and grey is for a dark sky. The second map is for how much light each village emit. You can switch between the years.
1. http://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html
2. http://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=8&lat=5183204&lon=2785360&layers=B0TFFFF
I went to Kara Tepe at the heart of the Rhodope mountains 1600m above the sea level. It is in the grey area and the sky was outstanding. You can get great shots with ease. Full if stars and details.
I will continue my research and use such locations to shoot faint objects. Here are some new photos of Lagoon nebula (40x30s ISO 25600) and M22 cluster (1x30s ISO 25600):
Recently I started to use Siril for processing my images as I was shown a new tool for star extraction Starnet++.
Since beginning of 2023 Chat GPT was launched as a human language model and start a new era of technological development.
As may times I said it is essential to keep all your shots over the years, as you can go back and reprocess them.
Make new discoveries or improve the resulting image quality.
When we have a new newton telescope we shroud avoid touch the collimation of the secondary mirror as we may get into troubles.
