Skinakas Observatory Cloud Cameras
In the following, we present live views of the north-west and north-east directions from the top of Skinakas Observatory, which is located at an altitude of 1750m. The images are updated every 5minutes (click on the images for a larger view). The latitude (35.4o N) and longitude (24.9o E) of Skinakas Observatory, as well as date and time, in UTC, are marked on each exposure.
The images come as a "bonus" of an exciting science project led by Dr. Gerd Baumgarten (Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Germany), which aims to study the spectacular, but so elusive, noctilucent clouds in southern European latitudes.
Of particular interest in the north-east view, just after sunset, are the lights of the city of Heraklion, as well as the faint lights from the town of Fira on the island of Santorini, which is located 145km to the north of Crete. An impressive time-lapse of the north-east view taken from 3pm June 6 until 10am June 7, 2022 is available here.
| North-West View | North-East View |
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| Azimuth:-42o, FOV: [74o horizontal x 52o vertical] | Azimuth:32o, FOV:[127o horizontal x 95o vertical] |
A couple of long night exposures, which show the star trails of the two views presented above, nicely demonstrating the wide field of view (FOV) of the two cameras, are shown bellow:
| North-West View | North-East View |
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| Azimuth:-42o, FOV: [74o horizontal x 52o vertical] | Azimuth:32o, FOV:[127o horizontal x 95o vertical] |