Crete and light-pollution

[Richard]

One of the reasons I love the S coast of Crete is the lovely dark skies. My geeky hobby is astronomy!

I've attached a light-pollution map of Crete, and a scale-bar. The higher the magnitude the darker the sky. As you can hopefully see, the N coast is awful but the S coast much better.

Although Plakias/Souda are just starting to register the sky is 'almost' pristine a couple of miles outside the area. I was a bit upset to be able to see Plakias at all, until I compared it to Weybridge, which is flood-lit by comparison!

[Frank And Julie]

The best dark sky for star gazing is from a boat outside of Plakias, even going out ½ mile makes a big difference, virtually no light pollution, the only problem is you can’t use a telescope for obvious reasons, but I go out a lot at night fishing and some days I don’t know if to look down for the fish or up to the stars, the milky way and many constellations are nearly always on show, I can arrange boat trips for this if this is something anyone is interested in.

[Richard]

Certainly am! I'll take you up if I can.

There in late Apr to look at an apartment, and take telescope etc before nights are too light in the summer months.

There are new binoculars that would be ideal, I think, sort of super opera glasses, very small and light-weight, about 2x magnification but gather lots of light too. Sitting on a boat with these sounds lovely...