{"id":11472,"date":"2018-04-17T21:14:31","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T11:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexwisephotography.net\/blog\/?p=11472"},"modified":"2019-01-16T08:12:45","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T21:12:45","slug":"how-to-plan-and-photograph-the-milky-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexwisephotography.net\/blog\/2018\/04\/17\/how-to-plan-and-photograph-the-milky-way\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Plan and Photograph the Milky Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>After recently moving away from the Canon 5D Mark II to a Sony A7RII, I was itching to get out and make the most of my new purchase by giving the low light performance a play with some astro photography.<\/p>\n

\"Milky<\/a>
Milky way over The Pinnacles, Western Australia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Milky way photography is something that has evaded me over the years due to the Canon struggling in low light conditions (to put it politely). With the purchase of the A7RII, it was now finally time that I could get out there and shoot in low light conditions without having an image of nasty noise!<\/div>\n
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But there was one slight problem… I knew nothing about the milky way and spent too much time admiring other people\u2019s photos to take a step back and learn about how to photograph it myself!<\/div>\n

Things to consider when planning a milky way shoot<\/b><\/h2>\n
For the purpose of this post, I\u2019m not going to go into great depths on how to use PhotoPills<\/a> to plan a Milky Way shoot as I think other people have covered this in much better detail than I can. This tutorial by the PhotoPills team<\/a> is a great starter.<\/div>\n
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There\u2019s also some other great tools out there for planning a milky way shoot such as Stellarium<\/a> and Sun Surveyor<\/a>. Like anything, it comes down to personal preference and finding something that works best for you. <\/b>For me, photo pills is easy to use which is good for a simpleton like me \ud83d\ude09<\/div>\n
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Sky tracking mounts<\/strong><\/a> are becoming a popular way to reduce the noise in milky way shots. A popular mount is the SkyWatcher<\/a> mount which rotates to offset the movement of the night sky which in turn allows you to capture longer exposures at a smaller aperture. By doing so this allows you to photograph at a lower ISO which in turn means less noise.<\/div>\n
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This post will look to cover some of the questions I had as I was learning more about Astro photography. Sometimes it was simple things like<\/div>\n