Recognizing the Milky Way in a Light-Polluted Sky

Milky Way rising over Silver Lake near Brighton, Utah ~ © Royce Bair (click to enlarge).
Reddish glow on the left is light pollution from Park City, and on the right is from Heber City.

Last Friday, I participated in an evening photowalk with about 100 local photographers. With the help of a lecture I gave a few days before, I guided many on their first ever photographs of a starry night sky. For several, it was a dream-fulfilled to see and photograph their first Milky Way.

People from big cities throughout the world often write and tell me that they'd love to see and photograph the Milky Way, but it is too light-polluted in their region. For the most part, that's true. However, in almost any area of the world, you can still see the Milky Way if you're willing to drive a few miles and train your eyes to see the shape and features of our galaxy—viewed from the perspective of our planet.

The above photo was taken only 11 miles from the edge of Salt Lake City, and we are still in a 'orange' zone according to Dark Sky Finder's map of the area. Even after the Milky Way appeared at 11:00 PM, in the region that I had predicted, many still could not see it until I photographed it and showed it to them on my camera's LCD monitor:

Even this raw, unprocessed view is 4X brighter than the naked eye view, because of the
light-gathering power of a 20-seconds time exposure, a fast lens, and a high ISO.

It's not hard to recognize the Milky Way in the top, post-processed photo, but it takes some education, experience, and practice to recognize the features of our galaxy, especially in a light-polluted sky, where the contrast and colors of the stars are muted by stray, artificial light.

More light-gathering: The top photo is a double-exposure of the middle image and this 3X exposure to increase the detail in the landscape and the reflection in the lake water:

A 60-seconds exposure washes out the sky and blurs the stars, but adds detail to the landscape. Adding the post-processed sky (mainly contrast adjustments in Photoshop's 'Curves') from the middle image produces the final photo (top).

POTW: 'Birthday Girl' by Aaron M Photo

"Birthday Girl" ~ © Aaron Meyers (Aaron M Photo). Click on photo for a larger view.

This 75th Birthday of the Golden Gate Bridge is our featured Photo of the Week. Aaron Meyers photographed it with a Nikon D700, using a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S @ 40mm, f/9, 3.3 sec, ISO 200. Aaron set the camera on bulb mode so he could control how long the shutter was open. It was shot just below "Slacker Hill" in the Marin Headlands. There was no manipulation of this image other than Lightroom and Photoshop for standard clean up.

Challenges: Fog was predicted for this evening so there was worry that the entire thing would be skunked and the fireworks wouldn't be visible. The location Aaron wanted to use, Hawk Hill, is lower in elevation than Slacker Hill and he feared if he went to the lower spot it might be in the fog. Meyers decided to go to a higher elevation and hope that if there was fog he might get fireworks coming out of it. As it turned out, there wasn't any fog at all and any location he would have picked would have worked.

Another obstacle to overcome was that fireworks can be blown out if you keep the shutter open too long. Depending on how long the fireworks lasted, Aaron knew he would have to quickly raise or lower the ISO. If he wanted to capture a lot of fireworks he would lower the ISO to let more of the fireworks be captured without clipping. If he just wanted to highlight a quick section of the fireworks, he would increase the ISO so he could get the color and details. He also wanted to keep the ISO fairly high because the lights on the bridge had been turned off and the bridge just looked black if the ISO was too low. "It was a constant struggle the entire night to get enough exposed without over-exposing," says Aaron!

Satisfaction: Aaron knew this was going to be a special event and he was excited to photograph it. Once he saw the weather was going to hold out and there wouldn't be any fog he started to get even more excited. Choosing the "best" spot to photograph became a tough decision.

"I was running all over, back and forth between places trying to decide," says Aaron. "Once the fireworks started I knew this was going to be a special day. The committee that organized the fireworks did a beautiful job and this was the best fireworks show I had ever seen -- complete with lasers, sparklers, fireworks, and more. It was truly a breathtaking experience. I know everyone around me, myself included, left in awe."

More of Aaron's night photography can be seen at his website.