Stargazing opportunity from a hotel balcony

Today my colleague Andrej Mohar sent me some information about a new boutique hotel that has opened in Slovenia. What's interesting and exciting about Vila Planinka is that it is in an intrinsically dark area and the balconies are intentionally unlit, so you could stargaze directly from the balcony of your room. In addition, the village lights in Jezersko where the hotel is located turn off at 23:00, so it would be a really comfortable place to stargaze from. Take a look at what the hotel looks like at night (you'll want to click to see a larger view):

Vila Planinka Hotel by Andrej Mohar is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

And here is a map of light emissions in the area where it is located, you can see that it is nestled in a "dark island":

Light emissions near Jezersko, from the Radiance Light Trends webapp

According to Andrej, the surrounding mountains block out light pollution towards the horizon, so the view is stunning.

If you look at the hotel website, you'll see that one of their photos shows a telescope in the room. I'm not sure if that is included generally or not, but it shows that the hotel is sees a view of the stars as one of the attractions of their location.

I have stayed in a number of hotels where the balcony had a light on all night, or the facade is floodlit, and I find it really unpleasant. It's great to see that some hotels are realizing that there is value in letting guests enjoy the dark!

Looking for stars with the Loss of the Night app

I have a new photo showing someone looking for stars with a phone:

This work by Christopher Kyba is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.