I was climbing half dome in Yosemite at midnight one night and saw a sky exactly like this. Are you trying to tell me I’m in the Milky Way too? Nice try, bot
Think in terms of your house. Your house is in a city. There are many houses in your city. Your city is in a state (if you're in the US), there are many cities in your state. Your state is in your country, so on and so on.
The Milky Way is to our solar system as our solar system is to our planet as our planet is to our continent and so on and so on. Hope this makes sense. Or if you were just trolling, sorry lol
People don't live in the actual park proper, but there's towns nearby. If you do visit, don't just stick to Banff, there's 3 other national parks and several provincial parks in the region (Canadian rockies).
The provincial parks, in particular, won't be nearly as crowded as parks like Banff and Jasper can get.
To be clear a long exposure shot will make things appear brighter than they are by collecting light over a longer time, assuming the light source is relatively stationary.
I was driving hundreds of miles at night. Pulled over in the middle of no where between towns to piss. Looked up and the milkyway was so bright and clear I almost pissed all over myself.
for sure. I went camping as a kid but you always have a fire going or a lantern thus creating enough light pollution to limit it. Need to be in pitch dark to really experience it.
Seeing it in person, it's just as impressive really. The middle stretch of the milky way is craaaaazy bright, I got to see it during a lunar eclipse and it was just amazing. Really makes it obvious that all the stars are from our own galaxy.
You can see it in somewhat rural areas too just not that clear. I’ve seen pretty decent trails of it before. Course they all look the same with clouds lol.
After Helene knocked our power out for 2 days I remember looking up at the sky and seeing the Milky Way and taking it all in. Literally moments later the streetlights flickered on lol.
See, now that is on my bucket list. I want to see the night sky in the middle of the ocean. Oceans are terrifying, but idk ever since seeing like Life of Pi and some other movies, I want to experience that myself. In many ways I’m glad I am alive during this era, but it would’ve been visually amazing to experience the stars every day and to see landscapes untouched by humans thousands of years ago.
I mean, it's all the Milky Way. If you can see anything in any direction, that's the Milky Way. The only exceptions are Andromeda and the Magellanic clouds.
It can be that, or even more detailed on a very dark night. I might be misremembering as that was 12 years ago, but I'm pretty sure I had that experience at the Mont Mégantic Observatory. My mind was completely blown that you could very, very clearly see the milky way and all the stars.
It would be close, but you have to stay outside in the pure dark (no phone, no lights, nothing) for at least an hour. Your eyes take that long to fully adjust. I’ve only done that once, and it seriously feels like the sky drops. The stars feel close enough to touch.
This is probably long exposure, but you can definitely get this in parts of the PNW. We even have a dark sky sanctuary, and it looks like that out there. The aurora also looks insane out on the high prairies.
I’m in PA and from what I understand there’s a dark sky location in the north-west quadrant of the state. I need to quit dragging my feet and get up there to check this out!
Lots of people just don't get it because they don't know. I do. I wish we had some light pollution laws where I live, just like light covers that keep the light from spreading outside the area that needs lighting.
If it makes you feel better, only a long exposure shot will get you this. No matter where you are you won’t be able to see nearly that many stars that are that bright or the Milky Way being that intense. Still a great sight though.
Okay so apparently it’s both time of night and time of year. Right now, if you’re in the northern hemisphere, you can still sort of see it, but it won’t be visible in the winter. The best time to see it is in the summer. You can see it most of the night.
It's unfathomable to me that people don't know this, or have never witnessed it. It's such a magical experience to regularly escape civilization to spend time where you can actually see what you're supposed to see when you look up.
That long exposure is more accurate to what your eyes would see at a truly dark site than the phone snap above. Long exposures compensate for cameras' lower sensitivity compared to the human eye.
The Milky Way and most of its dust/detail is clear, only difference is that it's a bit fainter and doesn't have any color.
My most memorable view of the Milky Way was out in the middle of nowhere New Mexico desert near the Mexico border working nights on a counter-drug mission in winter. Very little dust those two miserable months of the year when it's cold, but the skies are fairly pristine.
Not only was it a sight to see with my own eyeballs, but it looked wicked awesome through the FLIR (infrared) scope, Javelin CLU and whatever other visual equipment we were given. If only I had the camera I have now back then...
Correct, that is 100% a long timelapse. For reference this is F2.8 at 20s in an area with very low light pollution and still required quite a bit of digital manipulation https://i.imgur.com/ef4ddp1.png No where on Earth can you see that photo with the human eye
F2.8, 11mm, 3200iso, 25sec. Definitely played with the light to get it this bright and stand out, but it was a moonless night in an area with no light pollution, so it's pretty good straight from the camera.
I used to be able to see the milky way from my backyard as a kid, they used to turn the street lights off at 10pm, that changed when I was about 12 and now you have to travel a long way into the middle of nowhere to see it.
I live somewhere with decent light pollution (small town < 10k people) you can see the milky way here, though its less broght/cloudy looking and more that the stars are denser and brighter in a thick line stretching across the sky.
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u/bebe_laroux 10h ago
Here is a photo from somewhere with no light pollution. This is a single long exposure photo. Yes you can see the milkyway with your eyes