I have been treated the least few weeks to getting up at 4am walking east out my garage and being floored by the milky way.
My challenge is to see who can reproduce what i see......
I would rate my view as dark skies down to mag 6 (just)
There are some great longer exposure, by I am wondering what shorter exposures would look like and how close they can be to the real eye view ie down to say mag 6 and 7 only????
some of houghys earth shine moons have been pretty close to "naked eye natural" if you know what i mean. So was wondering if the milky way can be done the same way
I think it comes down to the colour as much as anything.
This shot is a stack of 20 second exposure taken on a fixed tripod out in the wheatbelt here. I always remember it as being like what I see visually out there, partly due to detail shown and partly due to colour. I'm sure that in reality it might show more than what I see visually, but it certainly looks similar to my memory, and gives the same 'feeling' to the scene.
No sorry... I suppose I could work that out, but I haven't I also rarely try to estimate what I can see down to visually while I'm out there .. too lazy I guess
Ill throw in my two bits worth, heres a few Pix taken at different times of the year of the Southern Milky Way, theres one here that seems to be what your looking for with only the brighter stars visible, however the longer one loks at the night sky on a clear night seems the more we can see.
When the clouds go away again (they only came in last night) I'll give it a go, Davo. You want the East, I'll try get the East. I think your darkness would be similiar to mine.