Need help viewing the Milky Way in Maui

[shikhan]

So i'm going to Maui next week, and I'd like to try out see/take some pictures of the Milky Way, but there are some major gaps in my knowledge.

The biggest issue is I don't know when and where to point my camera! I've read up what I can on astrophotography, and while there is a good amount of material on taking pictures without a mount, such as stacking techniques, I haven't been able to come across anything that shows you where/when the Milky Way is visible.

I'll be going up to Haleakala crater to see the sunrise, and I am willing to go up earlier to stargaze.

I have access to Google Sky and also will have an iPad if there is a good astro app on there. Google Sky at least has a lot of information, but doesn't inform you where the milky way is (yes, I know we are in the Milky Way, but I'm referring to the band seen in MW pictures; is there a better term for this?).

So if anyone has any tips for a first time astro shooter, or tips specifically around Halekala, please let me know!

[SteveInNZ]

Ask Google Sky to point you at Sagittarius. It's right in the middle of the milky way. Give your eyes time to adapt to the dark and you won't miss it (assuming there's no moon in the sky).

[shikhan]

Thanks!

Is the milky way only visible when the moon is down, or can it generally be seen even if the moon is up?

[SteveInNZ]

The darker the better to get the most impact. Depending on how much crud is in the air, you can see it when the moon is up but since you're going to some effort to see it, you should try for the darkest sky you can get. It's a bit of a shame that it's a full moon next week. You may get some dark sky in the morning early in the week or in the evening later in the week.
I don't know what Maui is like these days. You may find that just driving for 10 minutes out of town and then waiting 5 minutes for your eyes to adapt will be enough for a pretty good view. Good luck.

[A.S.I.G.N. Observatory]

Download Stellarium. It's a planetarium program that you can set for your latitude/longitude and date/time. It then runs in real time, can be zoomed in or out to show you what's in the sky and what's about to come up in the east or go down in the west.

A lot of us astrophotographers use it as an invaluable tool to planning our imaging sessions.

Baz.

[shikhan]

Cool program, ASIGN.

Do you know how accurate it is in terms of modeling sun/moon rise/set?

If I'm understanding the program correctly, it is saying the moon will be up until past 6am (using Haleakala Observatory) and the sun won't be up until just around 8:45am. I'm running this for 2012-07-01.

However, when I use other resources on the web for sun/moon rise/set, such as (http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astron...s-one-year-us/) it is showing moonset at 3:43am and sunrise at 5:49am.

[BigRedNole]

Thanks for the Stellarium advice. I was trying to see how I would know if the Milky Way was out there. Now that I do, I can get my barn door done to take some long exposures to capture it.

[A.S.I.G.N. Observatory]

Originally Posted by shikhan

Cool program, ASIGN.

Do you know how accurate it is in terms of modeling sun/moon rise/set?

If I'm understanding the program correctly, it is saying the moon will be up until past 6am (using Haleakala Observatory) and the sun won't be up until just around 8:45am. I'm running this for 2012-07-01.

However, when I use other resources on the web for sun/moon rise/set, such as (http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astron...s-one-year-us/) it is showing moonset at 3:43am and sunrise at 5:49am.

Make sure you have set the time for the correct region and daylight savings mode.

[DF2gadgetman]

Pack a lunch and bring a light jacket. Maui is one of my favorite vacation spots. Have a great time!

[shikhan]

Originally Posted by DF2gadgetman

Pack a lunch and bring a light jacket. Maui is one of my favorite vacation spots. Have a great time!

I packed my snowboard gear, and I was glad I did - it got cold up there!

We got up there right after moonset, which left 2 hours to sunrise. I managed to get 2 light sets, and 4 darks before I had to move to set up for the sunrise pictures.

Unfortunetly, it seems that DSS is having issues stacking/detecting the stars for some reason. I think I'm going to try again another night, because I must have screwed up the settings - the image it returned was a vertical image and it only reported 10 stars - I can see far more than that in just one sub in the raws.

I'm following the following tutorial http://asignobservatoryii.webs.com/tutorials.htm


Update: I think I figured out why this isn't working for me. When I load the RAW files into DSS, it's seeing each sub as 1336x3516; the pictures are actually 5184x3456.

Does anyone know what might be wrong?

[hollis_f]

Originally Posted by shikhan

Does anyone know what might be wrong?

I think so. It seems that DSS can't understand the format of your raw images. There may be a beta version that will work - check the website.

[armis]

Alternatively, try opening them in your favourite RAW processor first and exporting them to TIFFs.