Hi.
The funny thing about learning and getting into astrophotography is my new found obsession with the weather, however, I seem to have started at a poor time.
Living in central Europe has resulted in, quite literally, 2/3 nights a month, if less, for available imaging time.
Anyone else living in cloudy gloom?
Since november I was out shooting 3 times. Yeah this year is bad.
Well, for me in southern Germany the fall was really bad and I missed out on the late summer targets. The winter is kind of okay this time, because we get at least some clear skies with the dry and cold weather. The last two years the winters were extremely wet, which resulted in 0 imaging nights for several months. Thankfully at 50°N you get up to 12h of astronomical darkness per night so you can still rack up the integration time per target.
I gave up shooting as many targets as possible and try to shoot in projects with longer integrations per target.
I’m still a traveller, so I have to pack up and drive to shoot every time a clear night with <50% moon comes up. Last year because of work and other private obligations I did miss out on many nights, so for me if there are more clear nights available on average than I have the energy and time to go out I can’t complain.
This might change once I have a permanent backyard setup, but for now it is fine. I am happy with my images.
And shouldn’t be this the goal in a hobby?
Clear skies!
Hi.
The funny thing about learning and getting into astrophotography is my new found obsession with the weather, however, I seem to have started at a poor time.
Living in central Europe has resulted in, quite literally, 2/3 nights a month, if less, for available imaging time.
Anyone else living in cloudy gloom?
Hi,
I would say not only Europe.
Here in central Mexico 22°N 101°W it is the same. As an avid Sun imager 2025 was a lousy year compared to previous years.
The only thing we can do is have patience or change our hobby 🥸
Eastern France is no better from the weather perspective. That gives me more time to improve my images!
I think patience is part of our hobby.
I usually spend a month over Christmas in my native Sardinia, in the middle of the Mediterranean. In 2024, we got perfect imaging weather for 20 days out of 30. This past year, we got 3, at best.
It’s just one of those years.
jack_miller · Jan 27, 2026, 08:54 AM
Hi.
The funny thing about learning and getting into astrophotography is my new found obsession with the weather, however, I seem to have started at a poor time.
Living in central Europe has resulted in, quite literally, 2/3 nights a month, if less, for available imaging time.
Anyone else living in cloudy gloom?
I live in poland, the weather varies extremely from year to year, especially with the rapidly accelerating global warming. 2024-2025 winter was excellent, there were 10-15 clear nights per month, and it was unusually warm, 20C in February (its supposed to be -5 or less)
March 2025 was entirely clear as far as i remember, i was outside every single day.
Winter 2025-2026: absolutely horrible. 1 clear night per month or less, very cold, below -15C along with abnormal snowfall of over 40cm within 24h (more than yearly average in one day)
Only 1 night since december was decent, the rest were under raging jet stream of over 60m/s