A Starry, Moonlit, Cloudy Night...

2015-12-17

Updated: 2015-12-18

The bane of astrophotography are, in order, clouds and light pollution. The clouds come and go, but as a city dweller, the light pollution is constant for me where I live. To that, I don't have a car, so I'm limited to travel to places using public transport - and since public transport tends to go to places where there is a public to transport, it's usually a poor method to get away from city lights.

That's what I thought until I found the Light Pollution Map [a]. The commuter trains from Stockholm go all the way to Nynäshamn, and between Stockholm and Nynäshamn is a sparsely populated void just south of Västerhaninge. I picked the center of the void - Hemfosa - and went. Unfortunately, my old nemesis the clouds turned up, but there was no arguing that the starry sky was clearer there than anywhere else I could reach by public transport.