How to Find the Milky Way

Let’s start by learning how to find the Milky Way in the night sky. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to prepare for your first night time adventure with the confidence that you can find the Milky Way in the night sky and point your camera to right place in the sky.

1 – What is the Milky Way?

The Milky Way galaxy is the galaxy where our sun and solar system is located. Looking at the Milky Way galaxy from a distant star, it might look like the following illustration:

A view of the Milky Way galaxy as seen from a distant point in space. This image is an artist version (image courtesy of NASA)

The image above is an artist version of what the Milky Way galaxy looks like from space.

Click here to see a full-resolution of this image.

However, the Milky Way that we see from earth is a view of the Milky Way Galaxy from our position in the galaxy. From earth, we see the Milky Way on it’s edge.

The following example image of Galaxy ESO 510 G13 shows below what it looks like to see another galaxy from an edge on view, outside of the galaxy.

This image of Edge-on Galaxy ESO 510 G13 was taken by the Hubble Telescope.

When we see the Milky Way in the night sky, we’re looking at all of the other stars and dust that makes up the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way gets its name from the fact that it appears like a “milky”, bright area of the night sky.

In a dark sky area, you can definitely see the Milky Way with your naked eyes. However, once you learn how to capture the Milky Way with your camera, you’ll be able to see so much more detail than you can be seen with your naked eyes.

That’s why you’re here, right?

Identifying parts of the Milky Way

The example image below is a panorama of the Milky Way (a panorama is an image that is created by stitching together multiple images to make a single, wide image that’s not possible with a single lens).

The best panoramas of the Milky Way should be taken between January and June (from the northern hemisphere). After June, the Milky Way becomes more upright in the sky and it’s difficult to get a good pano.

This panorama image of the Milky Way is an example of how you can see the entire Milky Way in the night sky (Image is open source from PXHERE)

On the image above, the “core” of the Milky Way is our view looking into the very center of the Milky Way. While the Milky Way is almost always visible in the sky (weather, light pollution and moon light not withstanding), the Milky Way core isn’t always visible.

(Learn more about making Milky Way Panoramas in our advanced topics class.)

Image highlighting the Milky Way core (image used with permission from PXHERE)

2 – When to view the Milky Way

The Milky Way is visible on any night when the moon isn’t in the sky. Even a little sliver of moon light is enough to blow out the Milky Way.

Milky Way moon and no moon comparison

Light pollution is another factor in your ability to see the Milky Way. Light pollution will obscure your view of any portion of the Milky Way that is near the horizon. Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest issues in getting a great image of the Milky Way.

It can be impossible to see stars, the night sky and the Milky Way if you are in the middle of a city, with the city lights obscuring your view of the night sky. The moon is the other source of light pollution in the night sky… the moon will literally blow out the night sky so that you can not see or image the Milky Way.

During the full moon nights, you should focus on imaging the moon and forget about the Milky Way.

Avoiding the Moon

The first thing to understand is that the moon cycle varies every month. The following is an example of how the moon phase vary during a month.

You want to plan your Milky Way shooting adventures by avoiding the full moon phases, and ideally around the “new” moon phases. Note that there are still plenty of nights that you can shoot the Milky Way as the moon phase shifts, simply by figuring out when the moon will rise and set on any night.

3 – Online Tools to Help You

Before your leave your house to go out into the night and take a photo of the milky way, you should first figure out WHEN the milky way will be visible in your selected site.

There are several online tools and phone/tablet apps available to help with this planning. One of the best, free, online tools to use is called Stellarium.

Stellarium presents a virtual view of the sky. This virtual view enables you to look at the night sky at any date/time in the past or future.

As a planning tool, you can use Stellarium to quickly determine what the milky way will look like in the night sky on any given night and where the moon, planets and constellations will be in relation to the milky way.

Stellarium gives you a virtual view of the sky from anywhere on earth.

The controls are very simple to use. The time/date slider is the primary control to set when you plan to be in the field.

By changing the date and time, you can see exactly where the Milky Way, the moon and other celestial objects are in the night sky.

To set your target location, click on the location button. This opens a location search window where you can search for and set the target location for the sky view.

Change the location for the virtual view with the search button.

Stellarium can also provide education about constellations, planets and other night sky features.

You can toggle constellations on/off if you want to learn how to identify them.

Stellarium also has a phone app (paid).

There are other awesome, paid apps available for your tablet/phone. These include the following apps:

Photopills ($9.99 USD)

Planit Pro ($9.99 USD)

One advantage of installing an app on your phone is that the phone apps include “augmented reality” views of the sky. This feature comes in handy when you are out in the field scouting a site during the day, and looking around the scene.

Here’s an example of the augmented reality view of the milky way, overlaid on the live camera image.

Augmented reality view of the milky way overlaid on the camera’s live view image. (image courtesy of Photopills)

4 – Finding a Dark Sky

Once you’re comfortable that you can plan the time of the month that the milky way will be visible in the night sky without the moon, the next consideration is to find a dark sky.

Noise pollution is the enemy of taking great milky way images. Fortunately there are some great resources to help you find dark skies. The best online, free site is the Light Pollution Map. In the light pollution map, find your home in the search dialog, then zoom out and look for nearby dark skies.

NOTE: Depending on the season, the Milky Way will be found in the south east, south or south west skies.