Your deep sky companionYour deep sky imaging companion
Milky Way season
The bright core of the Milky Way is only in the night sky for part of the year, and only for some hours each night. Choose your location to see your best months, tonight’s core times and the moon-free dates coming up.
No saved locations on this device yet. The home-screen app keeps its own saved places, separate from Safari, so save one here once, or add it with sky darkness on the My sites page.
Nothing is sent anywhere: the math runs in your browser. Times use your device’s clock and time zone.
The core sits low in the southern sky, 29° south of the celestial equator. The farther north you are, the lower it gets and the shorter the season. The farther south, the higher it climbs. These are worked out with the same maths as the tool above, counting hours with the core at least 15° up during astronomical darkness, with no Moon or weather.
| Latitude | Best months | Also possible | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|
50° N Vancouver, Paris | None | None | 11° |
45° N Minneapolis, Portland | None | May, Jun, Jul | 16° |
40° N Denver, New York, Madrid | Jun to Jul | Apr, May, Aug | 21° |
35° N Los Angeles, Nashville, Tokyo | May to Jul | Mar, Apr, Aug, Sep | 26° |
30° N Austin, Houston, Cairo | Apr to Aug | Mar, Sep | 31° |
20° N Honolulu, Mexico City | Apr to Aug | Feb, Mar, Sep, Oct | 41° |
Equator Quito, Singapore | Mar to Sep | Feb, Oct | 61° |
25° S Brisbane, Johannesburg | Mar to Sep | Feb, Oct | 86° |
35° S Sydney, Cape Town, Santiago | Mar to Sep | Feb, Oct | 84° |
Best months have 3 hours or more of core time on the 15th, and possible months have 1 to 3. At 50° N the core never climbs above 15°, so there are no good months there. Farther north it stays even lower.
Pick the right night
Go in the week or so around new Moon, with the core above the horizon in the dark and a clear forecast. Haze matters as much as cloud for a low object, so a dry, transparent night beats a humid one. The dark nights calendar shows the moon-free hours, and the planner gives the weather verdict.
Pick a dark site
Sky darkness makes the biggest difference. Aim for Bortle 4 or better, and look for a site with a low, clear horizon in the direction of the core (in the northern hemisphere, south to southeast). Save the Bortle class of your sites on My sites, and see the light pollution guide for how to find dark sky near you.
Gear
A camera with manual controls, a sturdy tripod, and a wide, fast lens: 14 to 24 mm at f/1.4 to f/2.8 is the classic choice. A remote or intervalometer avoids shaking the camera. A red light keeps your eyes adapted, and a dew strap or a lens heater helps if the night is damp.
Starting settings, untracked
- Shoot RAW, with manual exposure and manual focus.
- Open the lens as wide as it will go, or stop down a third to one stop if the corners look soft.
- ISO 3200 is a good start; go to 1600 or 6400 to suit your lens and sky.
- Exposure about 500 divided by your full-frame focal length in seconds: 25 s at 20 mm. High-resolution sensors show trailing sooner, so 300 divided by the focal length is safer. The exposure calculator does the 500 and NPF rules for your camera.
- Turn off long exposure noise reduction and image stabilization.
- Set the white balance to about 3800 to 4500 K, and fix it later in processing.
Focus carefully
Switch on live view, zoom in on a bright star or planet and focus by hand until it is a small point, then take a test shot and zoom in again. Do not trust the infinity mark on the lens. See the focusing guide.
Going further
A star tracker (set to the sidereal rate) lets you use 1 to 2 minutes at 24 to 50 mm and a low ISO for smoother, more detailed images. Take a separate, untracked frame of the foreground and blend them. Stacking a dozen or more untracked frames in free software also cuts the noise. For a wider scene, shoot a panorama, overlapping each frame by about a third, and keep the settings the same for every frame.
Composition
A foreground gives the picture scale: a tree, a barn, a rock arch or a person with a headlamp. Scout it in daylight, and check where the core will be at the time you plan to shoot. Early in the season the core stands more upright in the pre-dawn sky. Late in the season, in the evening, it leans over toward the horizon.
Going for a full night out? The night checklist has a version for DSLR and mirrorless cameras.
- When is the Milky Way visible?
- The bright core of the Milky Way is visible from about March to September near the equator and in the southern hemisphere, and from about April to August at northern mid-latitudes. The band itself is there all year, but the core, in Sagittarius, is only above the horizon at night for part of the year. Summer is best in the northern hemisphere, and the southern winter months, June and July, give the longest nights and the highest core in the south.
- What time of night is the Milky Way visible?
- Early in the season, in March and April, the core rises a few hours before dawn. By June it is up from late evening until the early morning and crosses the southern sky around local midnight, which is 1 am on daylight saving time. By August and September it is in the southwest at dusk and sets within a few hours. The tool above gives the exact times for tonight at your site.
- How dark does the sky need to be?
- Bortle 4 or darker shows the core clearly and gives the best photos. From a Bortle 5 to 6 sky the core is faint to the eye but a camera still records it well. In a city, at Bortle 7 or brighter, a single exposure is washed out, although stacked and processed images can still show it.
- Does the Moon matter?
- Yes. A Moon above the horizon that is more than a thin crescent brightens the whole sky and hides the faint dust lanes. The best nights are the week or so around new Moon, and the dates list above shows the nights when the core is up while the Moon is down.
- Do I need a star tracker?
- No. A camera on a tripod works for the Milky Way, with a wide, fast lens and an exposure of 15 to 25 seconds. A tracker lets you use much longer exposures at a lower ISO, which gives cleaner images with more detail, but it also blurs the foreground, so people usually take a separate foreground shot.
- What camera settings should I start with?
- On a full-frame camera with a 20 mm lens, try f/2, ISO 3200 and about 20 to 25 seconds. Focus manually on a bright star, shoot RAW, and turn off long exposure noise reduction and image stabilization. Then adjust: shorten the exposure if stars are trailing, and raise the ISO if the image is too dark.
Open the Dark Window planner for the full GO / NO-GO forecast and targets that fit your gear.