Astrophotography made me rediscover the awesome little city of Vernon ( France )

Last week-end, my friend and I went decided to visit the little city of Vernon, Normandie ( France ) in order to shoot the Milky Way. Why did I choose this place ? There are two reasons for this decision :

• First, I remembered this nice place I went through some months ago for a free party nearby, the ambiance there is very calm and almost paradisiac in the sunny days.
• Secondly, Paris and its surroundings are definitely not places to shoot the galaxy due to the HUGE light pollution there is in here.

Let's begin by the story of the town's famous mill : It is still not sure of the date of construction but it would be a XVI century style and the bridge on which it stands dates from the XII century. In fact it's a pending mill wheel , the wheel can be dropped at any level of the water which is very convenient when its level falls. It used to be the property of a French writer who sold it to an American in the 30's, the mill didn't handle the WWII and as the owner died a few years after the end of the war, the town have put funds in its restauration to not let it sunk in the river. This mill became even more famous when Claude Monet find out about it, you can find his painting "Le Vieux-Moulin de Vernonnet" in the Museum of Art of New-Orleans.

That's all for the story , I hope you'll be able to impress people in the evenings with that :) By the way this is what the mill used to resemble with its wheel before:

So I have chosen "Le Vieux-Moulin" aka the old town's mill as my principal subject for the shoot. While I was setting up the tripod and as I was putting on the camera , the idea that this is perhaps not the right place to see the Milky Way trotter me more and more in the head and my suspicions were confirmed when I took the shot , see for yourself ( so many light pollution even in an 5000 habitants city ) :

To reassure myself with the idea that I might have the galaxy with this beautiful mill I told my brain that it was probably due to the settings and by acting on the exposure time I could finally see it ! I was definitely wrong ... Instead of having the Milky Way I had a view of what would be the night in day photo, my brain blown up :

It was my first time trying such long exposure ( 20 sec ) and thus made me remember the basics of photography the longer you expose, the more light your photo will receive and obviously a night shoot will turn into a day shoot with enough exposure/iso.

Here's the final shot of the mill ( but still no galaxy ... ) with some stars around :

I shot it with my Nikon D5300 and with the 18-140 MM lens ( 20 sec shutter speed, F/9.5 , 800 ISO and 18 mm )

I was kinda deceived of the result and told myself that I did 100 kms for nothing and to enlight my brain with ideas I took my warm beer and put it in the river to get it colder. Once I arrived to the river I met with Kermit who was starring at me :

I checked the photos taken by my mate but they weren't any different from mines so I convinced him to do some more road to find a better place to shoot that damn galaxy so we did a 100 km ride to get a clearer and less polluted sky at 3 in the morning, I was really determined.

We found a place in the south of our position that seemed way less polluted than the place where we had been. It's a very very little village, named Chanteloup with its 88 souls, where we stopped near a plowd field.

I got out of the car and took my app to locate the galaxy ( check it its amazing, its named Sky Map ) to finally know that the view is marred by the full moon phase. I then looked up to the sky and saw all the thousands stars above my head It was jawdropping for a parisian like me who used to see only a few ones.

It was made possible because there were no artificial light in the street, by that I mean no floor lamp, and more over thanks to the very little population concentration. See the result of such conditions :

Obviously, the light blue part is not from the original shot as I wanted to make it different so I gave the sky some blue shades which made the shooting star more visible. Yes I got one and its not added, I was very happy when I noticed it on my laptop ! I believe this one is from the Perseids, a swarm of meteors which occurs every year between july 17th and august 24th.

Here's how the view of the night sky would look like if it would have no pollution from where I am :

I hope to see more many great places like this city and to get better opportunities to shoot the Milky Way ( @daxon I hope that my next try will be the good one aha ) in a near future because its a sight that none of us should be deprived of !

Thank you for reading me.

Steampunkpowered