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Originally Posted by Joeyjoe
Thanks again guys
What's usually the best time of night to catch a good shot of the milky way?
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First look up about "astronomical dark" just like sunrise and sunset astrodark changes everyday and by location. After astro dark starts the sky is as dark as its going to get at that location, but you'll still have light pollution, moon glow etc to account for. However sometimes for shots including landscape try a few in the half hour or so before astro dark. The sky should look dark to your eye but a 10sec exposure should have it come out a deep deep rich blue which you might find more appealing for the shot. Never ever use auto white balance, hell never auto anything really. Set white balance to daylight and the stars come out natural with looking colours, anything else the whole pic just looks wrong/bad usually. The sky will probably start looking brown from light pollution but there are ways to deal with that later.
Second install Stellarium (its free) and use it to see which way the milky way is laying in the sky for the date/time/location you want to shoot your photo. While there look at where the moon will be too and how full it is. You might find it best to wait a day or two or even an hour or two for the moon to set if its full etc. There are tons of similar programs to Stellarium for all platforms and phones, they are just a tool to show you where everything is going to be positioned in the sky at a particular date and time for a specific location. So you might have to step through hourly/daily etc increments until you find a good time where things of interest you want to shoot are in a favourable position. Same goes for anything in the sky you want to photograph, use the tool (stellarium, sky safari, etc) to see where it is and when it will be in a favourable position
Third check out the meteoblue weather site. It can use gps co-ords and give you a couple days accurate forecast. Particularly its cloud layers forecast I find absolutely spot on so use that too to help you decide if its worth heading out. For my location the clouds generally clear up after 9pm for a few hours every night pretty consistently, you may find a similar window of opportunity for your area too.
The there are also tools the show you the direction the sun and moon are from a given location projected on a map so if you want to capture a shot for example of the moon sitting on top of the silhouette of a tower it can help you line things up (look up photographers ephemeris i think). Ultimately theres a lot of planning involved and tons of testing and wasted nights from weather to contend with just to end up with a photo thats been taken thousands of times already. but still we do the homework, get out there and capture data and slave over processing it. So make sure you enjoy it above all and try to learn along the way.
