[jr2]

Source:
http://www.space.com/28841-milky-way-loon-island-panorama-photo.html

[Goober5000]

Gorgeous.

[watsisname]

It's that time of year that the Milky Way's center is coming into view again.  I captured this photo of it two nights ago from eastern Washington.  The galaxy looks like it's in very nearly the same position and orientation.  (Same time of year and similar latitude and local time I guess.)



Evan's photo and setting are a lot more gorgeous of course.

[potterman28wxcv]

Can you actually see this without any instrument ? I've never ever seen the Milky Way outside of books and pictures..

[Colonol Dekker]

Light pollution is what makes it difficult.

[watsisname]

Yes, you can see it with just your eyes, though not as clearly as in photographs (it looks like a wavy milky band of light, hence its name), and you must be far from city lights.

This is an excellent resource for finding where you can or cannot see the Milky Way.  To see it at all, you must be outside the red regions.  The farther out you are, the more apparent it will be and the more faint stuff you can detect.  If you're in the green or better, then you can see the Zodiacal light (a faint glow, slightly dimmer than the Milky Way, caused by reflection of sunlight off dust specks in the plane of the solar system.)  If you're in the gray or black, you can even see that the air itself is luminous, a phenomenon known as airglow and caused by excitation of nitrogen molecules in the upper atmosphere.

[Phantom Hoover]

IME you can discern the Milky Way in rural areas reasonably far from cities (as in, Ireland-far from cities; not very far at all in American terms) but it doesn't look much like these photos: it's just a pale white smudge stretching in a band across the sky.

The galaxy looks like it's in very nearly the same position and orientation.

i'd be pretty alarmed if it had moved...

[watsisname]

Its position and orientation on the sky can be anything.  It depends on your location on Earth, time of day, and time of year.  For example, I can always and instantly tell when a photo was taken from the southern hemisphere, because then the Milky Way looks "upside down".

Also, I did a little photo manipulation to try (as best as I can) to recreate how the Milky Way appears to the unaided eye from a dark site.  It's not perfect, as the eye just does not see the same as a camera does (different dynamic range, different sensitivity to color, and so forth).  But it gives a fairly good idea:



Couple of things to make note of:
-The ground around you appears completely black when you're at a truly dark site.  You can't see a dang thing.  I stepped away from my camera/tripod at one point and could not find it from even 3 feet away.
-There are a LOT of stars, but they generally look colorless except for the brightest ones.
-The band of the Milky Way looks diffuse and mostly colorless.  If the zodiacal light is visible, then the Milky Way seems bluer and the zodiacal light yellower.
-The air about 10-20 degrees above the horizon seems to glow slightly.  This is airglow.  (I actually did capture it in my photo, it's not edited in.)  Airglow may look vaguely green or bluish.
-If you're wondering what the bright spots are near and just above the horizon, it is light pollution from distant towns.

[potterman28wxcv]

Actually that's quite amazing because you are far from these towns, and yet you can still see their lights. Seeing this photo, one would think that when you're in town you are in some kind of super enlightened blinding fog.

I would really like to be one day in such super dark environment.. France is too small to have such distant dark areas. At best, I can be in the green.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I would really like to be one day in such super dark environment.. France is too small to have such distant dark areas. At best, I can be in the green.

If you are from a yellow or red area, seeing the night sky from a green area is pretty amazing already. It's a shame that my vision has deteriorated so much that I can't enjoy such a sight in its entirety anymore. Or I'd need some kickass new specs.

[Wobble73]

France is too small to have such distant dark areas. At best, I can be in the green.

My mum and dad owned a farmhouse in France, near Mayenne (cannot remember the name of the nearest village right now, was a few years ago), it was so dark at night you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. The night sky (on a clear night) was quite beautiful and you could see plenty of stars!

[Phantom Hoover]

The best view of the stars I've ever seen was in the Dordogne, so being in France is not really a problem. I think you might be suffering from unrealistic expectations a bit — the Milky Way will never look as impressive to the naked eye as on camera. That's just how optics works.

[Mongoose]

My home is very much in the darker red area, but even then our neighborhood is at least far enough away from major shopping centers and the like that the sky directly overhead looks reasonably good.  The best night sky I ever saw was almost 17 or 18 years ago, when we went on a trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  My memory's a bit hazy, but I saw more stars those nights than I've ever seen since, and I think we even got a bit of the Milky Way.

[perihelion]

Best night sky I ever saw was walking back to the car after dinner on the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  No moon.  No light pollution.  I could hardly see my way to the car.  The towering trees did not detract from the view; it somehow added to it.  You could only see the trees for the stars they blocked.  Looking straight up to see more stars than I'd seen in an unobstructed sky whilst surrounded on all sides by utter blackness was one of the most disorienting feelings I've ever had.

2nd best was a Star Party at McDonald Observatory outside of Fort Davis, Texas.  The view was pretty impressive.  No milky way, though.  Wrong time of year.  And it was unnerving to see that the faint glow from over the horizon was coming from drilling crews in the Permian Basin.  Yeesh.  That was a lot of rigs.