Photographic Exhibition - "The Light of the Night at the End of the World"

Exhibitions, Tourism

1st September 2026 - 1st October 2026, Monday to Friday, from 10:00 to 13:00 and 13:30 to 16:30. Free entry at the Vila do Bispo Interpretation Centre.

The Vila do Bispo Interpretation Centre presents to the public, from 1st September to 1st October, the exhibition "The Light of the Night at the End of the World" by astrophotographer José María Fernández Vara. The exhibition showcases a collection of astronomical photographs taken with two small telescopes from Cape St. Vincent, inviting visitors to discover the wonderful shapes and colours of the stars, nebulae, and galaxies surrounding us as night falls. The title chosen by the author, "The Light of the Night at the End of the World", refers to the historical nomenclature of this location, the "End of the World", as described by ancient Greeks and Romans and Mediterranean navigators until the 15th-16th centuries, when the "Age of Discoveries" began, led by the Iberian peoples, marking a new dimension in the limits of the known world.

Each photograph in this exhibition is accompanied by a brief description of the deep-sky objects represented, highlighting their location and distance in light-years from our planet, aiming to inform and disseminate knowledge about the vast cosmic distances and to answer an age-old question: "Why is the night dark?"

With this exhibition, José María Fernández Vara aims to raise awareness among visitors that the dazzling brightness of the stars, nebulae, and galaxies surrounding us, despite being infinitely greater than the brightness of the Sun (the closest star to Earth, at a distance of approximately 150 million kilometres, about 8 minutes at the speed of light), does not illuminate the night in the way its intensity might suggest. The explanation is simple yet disturbing: they are very, very far away! For example, the nearest star to Earth - Proxima Centauri, a binary system in the constellation Centaurus - is located 4.2 light-years away, nearly 40 trillion kilometres, an unimaginable distance by our standards.

For more information, please contact the Vila do Bispo Interpretation Centre at 282 630 600 (landline), 927 193 677 (mobile), or via email: museu.celeirodahistoria@cm-viladobispo.pt

THE AUTHOR José María Fernández Vara was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1956. He studied Art History at the Complutense University and Sports Sciences at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. A retired teacher and enthusiast of deep-sky astrophotography, he is a passionate photographer of the night sky. He resides in the Municipality of Vila do Bispo, in the village of Budens, where he finds excellent conditions to pursue his astrophotography.