# Finding and photographing the Milky Way near Mono Lake



## sanjosedave (May 30, 2015)

What are some tips and tricks to find the Milky Way? I've tried Stellarium and recently downloaded goskywatch, but haven't had much luck.

I guess I want something as easy as: enter your location and time, enter what you are looking for (Milky Way), click enter and it shows you where to point your lens based on your location.

There are a lot of "tutorials" out there, any specific ones you would recommend? Thx


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## BeenThere (May 30, 2015)

"Sky Guide" app for iPad. Just hold up your iPad and it shows the constellations in the direction you are looking. Turn until the Milky Way is shown on the iPad screen and it's there in the sky in front of you.


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## dcm (May 31, 2015)

sanjosedave said:


> What are some tips and tricks to find the Milky Way? I've tried Stellarium and recently downloaded goskywatch, but haven't had much luck.
> 
> I guess I want something as easy as: enter your location and time, enter what you are looking for (Milky Way), click enter and it shows you where to point your lens based on your location.
> 
> There are a lot of "tutorials" out there, any specific ones you would recommend? Thx



Stellarium (both Mac and iPhone) works fine for me. I'm no astronomer; I just played with the tool to learn about it. The iPhone version allows you to hold it up the sky and it tracks your movements. These tools default to showing you a fairly realistic view of what can be seen in the sky. I can slew it forward to the date and location where I'll be to determine if an object will be visible and the best time and direction to view. I did that a couple hours before I read your note as I was preparing for a trip in July about 1000 miles from my current location and wanted to see the night skies overs a two week period to plan to be there. Now if only the weather will cooperate  

In Stellarium you can use the Location Window to choose a location using Lat/Long or select from a list. The Date/Time window will let you pick your date. You can change the settings (Sky and Viewing Options Window on my Mac) to increase the Milky Way brightness and reduce the default light pollution to match your locale. Then slew it forward or backwards to watch the night sky unfold. You an also control the labels you want to see. It took me about a minute to display the sky tonight over Mono Lake and see southern end would cross due south around 1 AM PDT.

If you were looking at the skies for the next few nights the Milky Way might not be too visible since it will be obscured by the full moon. It will be much better in a few weeks at the new moon. Unfortunately the Milky Way is not something you can search for in Stellarium because it is not a single location - it's a band of stars making up our galaxy that appears as a ring around the planet or a band of stars from horizon to horizon. I think most tools would have a problem with this unless they pick a random object in the Milky Way. Just choose a star from our galaxy and that should help you find the Milky Way. The constellation Sagittarius might be a good starting point.


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## dhr90 (May 31, 2015)

I've been using the Night Sky app so far, although I don't know if it shows the milky way. Will be downloading both those apps to play with on a trip next week so thanks


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