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Old 01-03-2019, 09:34 AM
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Astrofriend (Lars)
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Astro Tourism

I'm not sure if this was the correct place to place this information.

I have search for places where you can stay and doing astro observation under a dark sky. I live in Europe so I have concentrated it on that area, maybe still interesting for some of you who travel around in the world.

It's new and I have not gone very deep in reading all the links. But some of them look really interesting.

Here is the list:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/links/link...rotourism.html

/Lars

Last edited by Astrofriend; 01-03-2019 at 04:23 PM.
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Old 01-03-2019, 11:08 AM
Wavytone
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What about places of astronomical and chronological historical interest ?

In England for example this begins with stone circles, Greenwich, the Herschel museum in Bath, the RAS library is worth a visit, and so on. In Italy numerous museums with astronomical displays; one in Florence still has Galileo’s middle finger and an assortment of old scopes. In Paris the site of the original Paris observatory is still marked (in a park).

With regard to where to see a dark sky, the light-pollution maps are the key, colour-coded by Bortle scale. Not sure there are any locations better than Bortle 2 though.
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Old 01-03-2019, 02:27 PM
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Well, I visited some places.

Not dedicated to astronomy, but very dark sky (Bortle 1-3):

South Africa:

https://www.olivegrove.co.za, 20km south of Beaufort West
http://leeuwenboschfontein.co.za very dark twice a year star parties are held there : https://southernstarparty.org
Several accomodations in Sutherland (close to the observatory which you can visit)

Australia: Various nice and dark places.
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Old 01-03-2019, 02:49 PM
glend (Glen)
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Having been to Europe, and seen the Light Pollution Map for that whole area, it is unclear to me how anyone could find true darkness there - anywhere. I suppose you take what you can get. I am familiar with high latitude darkness of the kind found in my native Canada, which certainly does have good darkness away from the cities, but suffers from cold which inhibits interest a good part of the year, same for Iceland I would surmise, and the higher latitudes of Europe.
In my experience, and travels, nothing compares to Australia. Let's be honest, the Southern Hemisphere night sky is significantly more interesting than the Northern Hemisphere. The narrowband imaging targets alone are a good reason to move down under, if that informs your decision making.
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Old 01-03-2019, 03:34 PM
gary
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Hi Lars,

Thanks for the link.

If you would like to extend your list to include Australia, here are a couple of links you might like to start with :-

http://www.ozsky.org/
http://www.milroyobservatory.com.au/

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Mount Kuring-Gai NSW 2080
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Old 01-03-2019, 04:20 PM
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Hi,
Thanks for all comment.

What I looking for is some dark place with small cabins that you can rent and have your equipment at.

One of these links had an example, one week, b&b, car rent included, 850 €. I think it was for two persons. It was in Southern Spain. Of course not perfect darkness in this case but compare to where I live it's very dark. If I could stay at a place like that and doing astrophotagraphing a whole week I would have more photos than I normally get in a whole year. One more problem, it must be clear sky also.

I add the other places mentioned later.

Yes, good idea, I will later do a new list with ancient astronomical places. We don't have any in Sweden what I know.

Yes Europe have many bad places, but the Spanish Canary Island out in the Atlantic Ocean are better. Australia had been very interesting to visit, but it's very far away for us in Europe.

Thanks!

Lars
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Old 01-03-2019, 04:45 PM
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Lars, you’ve still overlooked a large chunk of the planet - the whole of Asia, USSR, Africa and the Americas.

I’ll stick my neck out a bit and suggest forget the USA - mainly ‘cause it’s so much better here.

But Yunnan in China does have dark skies - having been to Lijiang and Shangri-La where you could be observing at 3,500 metres well above most of the worst of the atmosphere, and free of light pollution, the naked eye limit is 7+ and while the temp does drop to zero most nights with a little snow, it’s in the tropics so it doesn’t get much below that at night. Though the local peaks are above 5,500m, and there are peaks above 7,000 on the horizon (Tibet).

And there’s New Zealand, particularly the South Island - near Mt Cook and Fiordland it is so dark on a clear night the gegenshein is visible naked eye.
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Old 01-03-2019, 04:54 PM
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Yes there are a lot of other interesting places. But I live in Europe and I have that in mind when I did the list. Places I can reach in less than six hours and not too expensive.

I add more information later, it was late and I was tired when I did that list.

Lars
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Old 01-03-2019, 06:50 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Astrofriend View Post
Hi,

Yes Europe have many bad places, but the Spanish Canary Island out in the Atlantic Ocean are better. Australia had been very interesting to visit, but it's very far away for us in Europe.

Thanks!

Lars
Well, 'very far away' is only in kilometers, because air tickets to Oz are affordable (EUR 1000) and the AU dollar is low now.
Last year we went to Oz and I brought my telescope an now I am there again.
And South Africa can be another option with amazing southern skies, affordable and 12 flying hours away.
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Old 01-03-2019, 10:58 PM
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Hi,
It had been very interesting to visit Australia, not only for astronomy. Some day I maybe come over.

About ticket price, from Sweden to Spain we pay less than 100 Euro with return ticket.

I have just come home from a travel to Madeira, a Portugueze island out in the Atlantic ocean. 220 Euro with one week at hotel with breakefast. And what I saw, very promising for astronomy observations.

My travel report here with the two first days completed:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/travel/eur...chal-walk.html

It was not much about astronomy, but I found a Sun recorder in a park.

/Lars
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Old 04-03-2019, 05:57 AM
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One of the readers suggested that I should also have the Archaeoastronomy places in the list. Great idea and I found two good links. You see them att bottom of the list.

http://www.astrofriend.eu/links/link...rotourism.html

Thanks for the idea!

/Lars

Last edited by Astrofriend; 04-03-2019 at 06:11 AM.
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Old 05-03-2019, 03:19 PM
Wavytone
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Well, wife said we’re going to UK and France again next year, so now compiling a list of places of interest and things to do.
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Old 07-03-2019, 09:29 PM
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Hi Nick,
Sounds like a exciting vacation. Southern France I have heard lot of positive comments about. I had a friend who had a remote oprerated observatorium in Southern France.

Someone provided me France Astro Tutorial links, see here:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/links/link...rotourism.html

I created a new page where common sunshine tourist places for Swedish people are. It's written in Swedish but the maps from Lightpollutionmap is in English so you can follow my ideas where to go in Europe.

Swedish sunshine tourist places:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/...sydeuropa.html

What's terrific with this places is that they are very easy to find and cheap for they who live in Sweden.

/Lars
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Old 08-03-2019, 04:12 PM
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Another two locations:

Indonesia (telescopes available):

http://deepsky-villa-karimun.com/astronomy-karimunjawa/ AirBNB l.isting:
https://www.airbnb.co.nz/rooms/31211812

South Africa (I have been there in 2015: pitch dark sky): http://bushmanspad.co.za
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Old 08-03-2019, 05:28 PM
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Hi Skysurfer,

Thanks a lot for the links, I have added them to my list:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/links/link...rotourism.html

South Africa sounds very exotic to me and exciting.

/Lars
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Old 24-03-2019, 09:25 AM
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Hi,

I and my girlfriend have booked a trip to Rhodes, an island of Greece. Our main purpose with this trip is to have a look at the ancient Greece. But maybe if we get a clear sky some night we can do some astronomy. I did a search for astro tourism at that island and found this:

http://astronomy-hotel-rhodes.com/english/indexENG.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iywjIp-BtaM

We have already booked our room at other place, but there are also possiblie to rent mounts and telescopes.

Maybe someone of you who read this has been there and can tell more?

I added the link to my astro tourism link list:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/links/link...rotourism.html

/Lars
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