The Milky Way at night

[Adamsavage]

I'm starting to become very curios to how visible the Milky Way is at night. I biked 10.4 km (Exact distance using Google Earth) from the last city light. The view was just stunning, so many stars and trying to find M31 proved to be a challenge, but after some scanning of the general area I knew it was in. I finally managed to get it in my Bino's. The Milky Way not only was Visible, but it jumped out at me. You could clearly see it rising from the SW and arcing across the sky. When I realized how close I was to the city later on, I wondered how it's visibility would increase as I got further from the City. Is it even possible to make out the dust lanes ?

The best picture I could find is below. It looked similar to this, minus the dark dust lanes and not as bright.

[chrlzs]

The further away you are from light pollution, and the more time you allow your eyes to become night adapted of course, the better. Having a clear atmosphere helps, but not as much as the first two. I quite often camp far away from cities, and I've frequently seen those dark areas. In my experience it has not quite matched the type of image you posted, but it can get pretty close... It's hard to compare a naked eye view to an image, but if you wind the gamma back to about 0.5 on that image, it pretty much matches the best I've seen.

That was one particularly clear, dry summer night, with a very gentle breeze, camping way off the beaten track on the Nullarbor Plain in Australia, at about 31S, 131E. Nothing (not even a tree!) visible in any direction - 360 degrees of flat terrain, no light pollution, nothing. Nearest (tiny) settlement was about 70km distant, nearest city about 900km.. It was a wonderful, almost overpowering experience.. I didn't try, but I reckon I could have almost read a newspaper by starlight.. (reading it in moonlight is dead easy!)

Just remember to time your trips so you don't have the Moon visible!

[Jens]

It's a beautiful picture. It's interesting, though that you mention M31, which is one of the few objects we commonly see in the northern sky that doesn't belong to the Milky Way!