This night was something special: my first truly conscious experience under a genuinely dark sky.
Discovering Darkness
In northern Germany, there are still a few rare locations where the population thins out enough to offer proper dark skies. I was staying with my family in one such spot â a quiet holiday resort far from the reach of city lights. Up to that point, I had never really appreciated what a dark sky meant from an astronomerâs perspective. Sure, nights are dark â but thereâs a world of difference between a dim night near a city and a truly dark sky.
It was during this stay that I stumbled upon the Bortle Scale, a system used to classify night sky darkness. It considers factors like skyglow, cloud illumination, the visibility of the Milky Way, and whether you can spot deep sky objects unaided. My home sky falls into Bortle 6, which is fairly light-polluted. The holiday resort, on the other hand, was closer to Bortle 3 â and even that made an incredible difference.
The stars were vivid, countless, and overwhelming. I suddenly realized what I had been missing all along.
Once in Australia…
I had a similar â perhaps even more powerful â experience in northern Australia, in a place called Cape Tribulation. It’s a tiny village tucked between rainforest and coastline. One moonless night, my family and I ventured to the beach (yes, crocodiles!) to stargaze.
And there it was. The Milky Way arching overhead in full glory. According to the Bortle Scale, skies like that fall into Bortle 1 or 2 territory. One line on the scale says it all:
âThe Scorpius and Sagittarius regions of the Milky Way cast obvious shadows.â
And they did.
If youâre ever fortunate enough to experience a sky like that, youâll never look at streetlights or light pollution the same way again.
đž Capturing the Night
The images below were taken with my LG G6 smartphone, using 20-second exposures at f/1.8 and ISO 800. No stacking, no filters â just single frames. It’s amazing how much starlight you can capture with minimal gear under the right conditions.
Later, on October 4th, 2018, I took another image under my regular Bortle 6 sky. This one-shot frame (30 seconds at ISO 800) tells a very different story. The sky glows red, the horizon is washed with light from a nearby town, and the stars fade into the haze. You can still see the Pleiades (M45), but itâs clear: the brighter your sky, the brighter an object must be to stand out. Faint DSOs are nearly lost â unless you rely on narrowband filters or other tricks.
đ Final Thoughts
Experiencing a dark sky firsthand is something every astrophotographer should seek out. It changes everything â your exposures, your expectations, your whole relationship with the night. Just remember: real darkness isnât found a few kilometers outside the city. Sometimes, it takes a long drive⊠or even a journey to the other side of the planet.
Clear skies,
Chris