In recent years it seems to be fashionable to be able and to know how to photograph the Milky Way. No wonder it is in fashion and certainly a good trend…. After all, dark, starry skies are exceptionally beautiful and due to light pollution they have become scarce. On the island of La Palma, it is still possible to find dark skies easily and, in fact, it is considered one of the best places in the world to stargaze. It has also become a mecca for astrotourism, observe stars and night photography as the whole island has exceptional landscapes for this practice. If you are planning a trip to La Palma or anywhere else with dark skies and want to do nightscape photography, you need to be prepared. Here are the basics you need to know.

Recommended equipment for nightscape photography: preparation.

There is no room for improvisation when it comes to equipment for night photography. You must be well prepared, as night sessions usually take place in inaccessible or distant locations to avoid light pollution.

This is the equipment I recommend for night photography.

• Camera. The type of camera will depend on your budget as it is usually an expensive equipment. However, you will need a bright (fast) lens and a camera that allows at least 3200 ISO and long exposure. In general terms make sure the camera has: manual settings, RAW format, bulb mode, if possible full frame, noise reduction option and Live View mode (for manual focus).
• A wide-angle lens: 24mm, 14mm are ideal.
• A telephoto lens (if you want to photograph the moon).
• An Intervalometer.
• Warm, comfortable clothing and footwear.
• Spare batteries.
• A sturdy tripod.
• Memory cards.
• Camera backpack with different compartments (ideally waterproof).
• Headlamp, preferably red or white/red.
• Mobile phone with a charged battery.

Of course, once you have the right equipment, you need to know how to use it. It is best to start in the daytime, getting to know the camera settings (functions and changing parameters) and practising, as well as learning how to access and modify the menu and how to handle the camera in the dark. Other considerations are that it is best never to go alone to take pictures at night, simply for safety reasons.

What to photograph in the night sky?

Once you have your equipment, you need to plan what you are going to photograph – the Milky Way? constellations? It is vital to know what you want to photograph, as well as the time of night when you can do it. Photographing the winter sky is not the same as photographing the summer sky. Just as you can’t get the same results if there is a moon. Therefore, it is vital to have the right equipment and to have a basic knowledge of the sky to know where the Milky Way is and at what time you can see it, or how to find the North Star if you want to do a startrail for example. I recommend accessing the chosen location before sunset to prepare the best composition, make sure there are no obstacles or dangerous terrain.

Tips for nightscape photography.

• Knowing how to take advantage of moments of light. In landscape photography at night, there is hardly ever enough light, so a dim crescent moon or a small background light, such as a lighthouse, can completely change a night landscape. Also, in the dark, colours do not appear the same as they do during the day, so a dim light or illumination changes the landscape again.
• Changing perspective and angle
• RAW format photography
• Natural lighting. This goes for moon or sunset.
• Minimise ISO. A beginner’s mistake is to raise the ISO as high as possible. However cameras have their best dynamic range much lower, at 1600 ISO for example (do check the manual of your camera). And it is at this point that you get the best colours of the night sky.
• Take care of the composition.
• Know what hyperfocal is and know how to use it.
• Focus: The focus for stars is always the same for any given lens and is not necessarily the infinity. Focus in manual in liveview and once you have it tape the focus wheel. There is nothing worse than thinking your photos are in focus and coming home after a long night and your photos are unfocusses!
• The Golden Rule (combination of ISO, aperture and exposure time that it works best. See more on our following post).

Landscape night photography made in La Palma. Instagram: @lapalmastars.

More photo on our  Photo Gallery.

If you are interested in taking a specialised course in night landscape photography, we recommend the webinars of our partner Babak Tafreshi, National Geographic photographer and president of TWAN.

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The Roque de Los Muchachos Astrophysical Observatory on La Palma island is a prestigious research centre with one of the most advanced professional telescope arrays in the world. Here is a video with spectacular images of the night sky over La Palma and of the sky at the Observatorio de La Palma at night (see note below*). In the video you can see the William Herschel Telescope, the Gran Telescopio de Canarias and other smaller telescopes.

The Roque de Los Muchachos Astrophysical Observatory offers daytime visits to its facilities (Reservations: here) but night time visits are possible during working hours.

However, do not dispair as La Palma is a Dark Sky Reserve (an Starlight Reserve) and stargazing is possible on the whole island. Here is a list and map of the astronomy viewpoints and astronomical sites of interest if you wish to stargaze. But if you need a little bit more: explanations, use of telescopes and a guided tour of the sky, you may consider joining one of our astronomy tours.

More information about the Observatory on its official website: iac.es/orm

Video by Vikas Chandler. Observatory Roque de Los Muchachos (La Palma) at night.

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The Promenade of Stars of Science is an original idea of Anselmo Pestana, the President of the Island Council back in 2015, when the project started. The Cabildo Insular de la Palma, the Santa Cruz Town Hall and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias are participating in the project. Unfortunately, the Prominade has taken 5 years to be carried out as first, the remodelling of the beach had to be completed. The event held this December 2020 has revealed the Stars that currently make up the “Paseo de la Ciencia”. The four scientists awarded have personal and professional links with the island, hence, have been the first ones to be acknowledged.

Stephen Hawking

The first star is by Stephen Hawking, a renowned physicist and cosmologist linked to the Starmuss Festival held on La Palma and who was last on the island in 2016, shortly before his death. Hawking, who was the first to receive his star in 2016, is the author of many of the discoveries in modern astrophysics, such as the new theory of space-time and black hole radiation (“Hawking” radiation). Hawking worked throughout his life to unravel the laws that govern the universe and, together with Roger Penrose, he demonstrated that Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity implies that space and time must have a beginning, which would be the theory of the Big Bang, and an end, within black holes.

Alexei Leonov

The second star was for cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, who has also visited the island several times; Leonov was the first man to go on a space walk, on 18 March 1965, having been part of the first group of 20 cosmonauts in the Soviet space programme, set up in 1960. He was also the Soviet team commander of the first joint mission between the Soviet Union and the United States, Apollo-Soyuz.

Takaaki Kajita

The third Star (awarded in 2017) went to Takaaki Kajita of Japan, director of the Cosmic Neutrinos Centre at the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research (ICRR), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015, along with Arthur B. McDonald for their research on neutrino oscillations. Their research showed that these subatomic particles have mass. As the Swedish Academy’s prize jury pointed out, “their studies changed the understanding of the innermost behaviour of matter and may be crucial for understanding the Universe”.

Kajita is currently leading a major international collaboration project, the “Cherenkov Telescope Array“, which aims to study the gamma radiation that reaches the Earth and how it is produced. La Palma is the northern hemisphere headquarters for this project. Kajita laid the first stone of the prototype (LST) of the 23 telescopes projected on La Palma, just one week after receiving her Nobel Prize.

Samuel Ting

The fourth and last Star awarded to date (2018) has been for Samuel Ting, Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1976. The American particle physicist of Chinese origin belongs to the prestigious MIT in the United States, and has been a professor there since 1969. He received the Nobel Prize in 1976 for the discovery of the J particle, which once again consolidated the standard particle theory. Samuel Ting leads a project for the observation of neutrinos on the Space Station, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-0), with the aim of testing fundamental questions in modern physics including the existence of antimatter, the origin of comic rays and dark matter.

This collaborative project, involving more than 600 physicists, has collected 80 billion cosmic rays in 10 years. Ting’s team also aims to test whether the Big Bang model is true, when it predicts that there should be an equivalent amount of matter and antimatter in the Universe. For the moment, astronomers have not been able to find the antimatter and this is one of the great mysteries of the Universe. This is why many physicists believe that primordial antimatter simply does not exist. AMS-0 could prove whether it exists, or if on the contrary, a completely new theory is needed to explain antimatter or the Big Bang.

Next….Jocelyn Bell

It has been awarded the fifth Star, but unfortunately it has not yet been delivered due to the covid19. The Star is for Jocelyn Bell, the discoverer of the first radio pulsar signal in 1967, what has been an undoubted contribution to science. We will have a special article dedicated to Jocelyn Bell soon.

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If you cannot come to La Palma to see the telescope in sittu or, while the visits to the Observatory are suspended due to the covid19, you can make the visit virtually in the video (language: Spanish). The video explains what the telescope does, how it works and what the real post-covid visits will be like.

More about Science at the Gran Telescopio de Canarias can be found on the official website: http://www.gtc.iac.es/

Visits to the  Observatory at Roque de Los Muchachos will resume in 2021. Information & bookings here. More information about the Observatory on the official website of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC).

Video

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If you want to get the Observatory Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the Canary Island of La Palma for a visit or just to enjoy the fantastic views, here we explain how to get to the Observatory. There is only an access road, the LP4 road, that goes from Santa Cruz de La Palma to the municipality of Garafía. This road is a mountain road as the Observatory is virtually on the highest point of the island, at an altitude of 2400m. From Santa Cruz on the LP4, there are 36 km of road of sinuous curves. However, the road is beautiful and offers spectacular views, but since it is a mountain road, you have to climb slowly and carefully. It usually takes between 1:15h to 1:30h to get up with a few minutes to rest and to take pictures.

The access by Garafía has a shorter patch on the lp4 road, but first you have to get to Garafía, on the north of the island via the LP1 road. From Los Llanos de Aridane to the Observatory, on the west of the island, it takes about 1:30h without traffic and, from Santa Cruz de La Palma, by the LP1 to Garafía and then to the Observatory (12 kms on the LP4) it takes approximately 2 hours (on the east of the island). Also the road is very beautiful. We recommend to access the Observatory via Lp4 road from Santa Cruz and then leave the observatory via Lp4-Garafía-Lp1 to Los Llanos or to Barlovento.

Once in the Observatory you may access the Roque de Los Muchachos summet (inside the National Park). This last stretch of road is open during the day. At night, the road is closed to the public.

If interested on a guided visit to the Observatory (mornings only) , please book in advance on the link (limited places) here.

For more information about the Observatory please access the official website here.

La entrada How to get to the Observatory in La Palma? se publicó primero en AstroLaPalma.

• the darkness of the island
• a stable atmosphere
• the low air and light pollution
• the observatory being above the cloud level for more than 300 days on a given year
• the sky of La Palma is also protected by law from 1989 (Law of the sky), enforcing the control of light pollution by regulating street lighting and air communication routes.

Visits to the Observatory can be booked here: Daytime Visits.

New telescopes at Observatory Roque Muchachos

The newest incorporation to the Observatory facilities in recent years are 23 Cherenkov telescopes which will be part of the International Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). La Palma will be the northern site for this network. The largest Cherenkov telescopes will have 23 m in diameter. In 2016, the fundation has been laid for the 3rd Cherenkov telescope in La Palma.

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation ground-based observatory for gamma-ray astronomy at very-high energies. With more than 100 telescopes located in the northern and southern hemispheres, CTA will be the world’s largest and most sensitive high-energy gamma-ray observatory. This network will be capable of observing the whole of the sky, inside and outside our galaxy as it will have 120 telescopes between both hemispheres. It will also cover a very wide range of energies ranges from several dozen Gev to 100TeV (1 TeV = 1012 eV) seeking to understand the origin and role of relativistic cosmic particles, probe extreme environments and explore physics frontiers.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is very possibly another incorporation to the Observatory. It is planned to be located on Mauna Kea (Hawaii) but its construction has been temporarily halted due to protests by Native Hawaiian americans. In 2015, the State Supreme Court of Hawaii invalidated the TMT’s building permits and it is likely that the telescope cannot be built in Hawaii. Hence Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma is the alternative site. At the end of 2017, the final decision of the site for TMT will be decided.

The TMT is much larger than existing telescopes (although the E-ELT telescope is still bigger) and it is designed to observe from near ultraviolet to mid-infrarred (wavelength 0.31 to 28 μm). It also have adaptive optics which will help to correct errors caused by Earth´s atmosphere helping the telescope to reach its maximum resolution.

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Light pollution is defined as the introduction of artificial light to an ecosystem (into naturally dark situations), degrading its natural state with the emission of light of different intensities, directions, spectral range and/or unnecessarily varying a light/dark schedule (ie. having lights on a empty office building or streets lights on after certain times).

It is obvious that humans need and use artificial light during the night just…well…simply to live. But the use of artificial light should be in equilibrium with the nocturnal life, energy efficiency and health (avoiding the alteration of sleep patterns and the effect of artificial light at night on some cancers). We should try to minimize the impact of light pollution reducing the negative effects by designing better street lighting, scheduling of street lights, etc.

Light pollution increases the background brightness of the sky by reflecting and diffusion artificial light into the gases and particles in the air. This results in a reduction of visibility of the stars and other celestial objects.

The Sky Law in the Canary Islands (1989) controls gas emissions to the atmosphere on the island, as well as light pollution and air communications routes. The aim of the law is to have transparent and dark sky, with good (if not outstanding) quality for both amateur and professional astronomy. As a result, La Palma is a Dark Reserve (a Starlight Reserve) and thanks to this it has developed a Sustainable Tourism Industry based on the sky. There are many options for astrotourism in La Palma, we recommend you to enjoy the sky in one of our astronomy tours.

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