My second expedition after dark skies led us to beautiful island Milos. It’s mid-size island in Aegean see and it belongs to group of islands called Cyclades. The port and whole night life (bars, restaurants, discotheques) are located on the northern part of the island. We stayed on the other part of the island, where are empty, not organized beaches and mainly very low light pollution. To travel there is not straight forward, because Milos has very small airport. Therefore we had to fly to Santorini Island and from there take a ferry to Milos.
We found very lovely small house called Vila Kipos (AirBnB link) at remote part of the island. The place was decent for astrophotography. I measured SQM and it reached 21.3, which is not fully perfect, because the property is next to a road, and there are street lamps. However, it’s significantly better than what I have at home (SQM 19.9 – 20.4). There are much darker places on the island, but it would require batteries and to spend whole night in the nature. To photograph deep space directly next to the house, in which you stay, has significant advantages – electricity is available and the rig can photograph outside whole night and you can sleep inside.
The weather was excellent. Only two days out of 16 was windy or cloudy. Literarily, I had a deep space harvest. I managed to capture in two weeks as many pictures as during the whole last year. Initially I was bit afraid of these wires, which are in the south direction, but fortunately all the objects of my interest were above. I didn’t expect that I will manage to capture nearly all Messier’s summer objects in southern skies. Specifically, I captured M4, M6, M7, M8, M9, M17, M18, M19, M20, M21, M22, M23, M24, M25, M28, M30, M31, M33, M45, M54, M55, M56, M62, M69, M70, M73, M75, M80 and M107. Moreover, I captured NGC6822, NGC6871, NGC6888, NGC6939, NGC6946, NGC7000, NGC7293, IC5146, IC1396 and B347.
We took a short walk 1 km direction west, the street lamps disappeared and SQM reached 21.5. The Milky Way was so bright that it nearly casted shadows. These are the optimal conditions to test my new fish eye lens (Olympus Zuiko 8mm F1.8 ED PRO). Focused on Mars, ISO 800, Exposure 25s.
The nearest source of light pollution direction south is Crete, which is 120 km away. Anyway, the picture could have been better and probably I should have used higher ISO. Therefore it is not going to beat the Milky Way picture from last year.
Well, it was not just about taking astrophotos, but also about nice and empty beaches, snorkeling in crystal clear water, very delicious food and in general relaxing and charging our human batteries. I miss the Greece already and I cannot wait till I will go there again.
[…] picture was taken during my travels to Greek island Milos and it’s only integration of 24 of two minutes exposures. This means only 48 minutes in […]
[…] picture was taken during chasing darkness on Greek island Milos and in total was taken 30 pictures having exposure 180 seconds, i.e. total 90 minutes of […]
[…] have to admit, this nebula was the main reason and target of the trip to Milos and it was the first deep space object captured there. When I processed the picture I was so happy […]
[…] picture was taken on island Milos by integration of 24 picture each 120s, which means only 48 minutes in […]
[…] picture, like many others, was taken on island Milos, under dark Greek skies and it’s an integration of 58 minutes of the […]
[…] is third galaxy captured on Milos. First I was not able to resist and captured Andromeda, second one was Barnard galaxy and third one […]
[…] properly, the light pollution should be minimal, which I manage to experience during our trip to Milos Island. Unfortunately, the mound was not cooperating and in declination axis occurred oscillations due to […]
[…] Messier 62 is a globular cluster located in constellation Ophiuchus and it’s 22’500 light-years from Earth. Globular clusters are the most common deep space objects captured by me on Milos Island. […]
[…] between them is 1’800 light-years) and there were two last deep space objects captured on Milos Island. These two were the last missing Messier objects, which I wanted to capture and I was very happy […]
[…] was taken under dark skies of Milos Island and in total, it’s an integration of on 63 […]
[…] We rented a small cabin for a weekend and I took the same equipment which I took to Milos, i.e. telescope newton 150/600 mm, mount iOptron CEM25P and ZWO 071 Pro […]