Darkness 4 All

So tomorrow I will take off to Kiruna. Time to help Georgiy to load his stuff and drop some Equipment as he has the spacious VW Bus. Well he has so much stuff that the little bit of loading iss taking a while and requires speciaal 3D puzzle skills. Good that I was a drummer in a band in the past :) Georgiy will take the ferry and pick up some Russian colleagues in Helsinki. We will meet in Kilpisjärvi. ...a little bit of stuff he said... Packing with Georgiy and Franz ...if its not heavy enough just add concrete blocks... ..heaps of space left..

An important tool is the SQM roadrunner system. The Sky Quality Meter "SQM" by the Canadian manufacturer Unihedron is a small photometer that measures the night sky brightness. It has become the most widespread device for world-wide light pollution studies. You can get a handheld SQM and participate by uploading your data to websites like Globe at Night . The roadrunner system links an SQM (LU version) with a GPS - so you can move around and automatically track your position and the sky brightness. One can use any vehicle for that, researchers used cars or bicycles . First SQM road run south of Berlin The obstacles were driver installation, that the software ( infos in this pdf ) is in Spanish and the mounting. As I do not know the car I simply used a standard SQM housing and attached it to a base I found in my garage using tools I found in the garage ;) Now I can  strap it on the roof of the car. Some impressions below SQM in housing with base On r...

...just gathered some measurement equipment - is it going to fit?

So the preparation for Lapland begin.... Preparation is half the work! I love old fashioned maps. The tourbooks are for Campervan travels (Womo in German) - they prodvide nice information about lookouts, short hikes and of course parking lots and hidden open spaces where you can stay overnight with large campers. These are often good places for doing night sky observations. The hiking trail guide would theoretically allow to find 360° panorama spots but is not very helpful in winter ;)