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Northern Africa - Kingdom of Morocco - Sahara Desert - Zagora Province - M'Hamid El Ghizlane - Erg Lehoudi - Er Lihoudi - Classic desert landscape with constantly changing sand dunes, lines and shapes - Large sea of dunes formed by wind-blown sand - Night sky full of stars with Milky way
This year's obsession had been capturing Milky Way for various timelapse movies. I had been lucky enough to capture it in multiple countries, but Morocco with its very dark skies had been really perfect for it. Full timelapse video can be found :
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MOROCCO'S NIGHT SKY WITH MILKY WAY - Timelapse Video
This timelapse video offers night view at some iconic or less known locations in various parts of Morocco, might it be Sahara desert, Ksar Aït Benhaddou (UNESCO), High Atlas Mountains & Toubkal National Park or Telouet Kasbah along former caravan route from Sahara over Atlas Mountains to Marrakech.
This year's journey of Milky way obsession had been an interesting trip of discovery into even better understanding mysteries of night. Twilight/blue hour had been my favorite time of day for many years personally and photographically, always checking TPE for the sunset/twilight info, which varies significantly depending on latitude you are in. I previously didnt really pay attention to the other information such as Astronomical night. Now I know what it really is ! Astronomical night timing is the most important information for seeing and especially capturing Milky way. It was also quite surprising to find out that Czech Republic is actually north enough that it doesnt have astronomical night for about 1 month a year. It doenst get dark enough in my home country !! Of course it is not the same of the Nordic phenomena of 24 hours night or daylight or the famous "White nights" in St. Petersburg, but it was still surprising. Morocco not only provided some great dark skies with exotic setting, very limited air traffic (which is a real killer in Europe, once you are lucky enough to find dark enough place in today's very light polluted continent), Morocco is also in a great latitude to provide full view at the most interesting part of Milky way. The only downside of capturing Milky Way in March is that it starts to appear on the horizon after 3AM !! Those in the middle of the night wake up calls were never fun !
So what does Astronomical night means in a simple terms ? I set up the camera for the timelapse sequence and it was capturing same exposure image for hours, but once Astronomical night ended, every other image was brighter and brighter with the same setting when before I was getting continuously balanced images. Light changes quickly in Morocco (compared to more northern parts of hemisphere), therefore the difference was very significant with every new photo.
Camera Model: Canon EOS 5DS; Lens: EF16-35mm f/4L IS USM; Focal length: 18.00 mm; Aperture: 4.0; Exposure time: 30.0 s; ISO: 4000
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