From time-to-time I’ve been fortunate to see the Milky Way but due to the lack of dark skies, rarely in the UK.  With a move towards urbanisation taking place throughout the world, light pollution is a major obstacle to such views and astronomy in general and it is only in more remote, unpopulated locations that such sights are now possible.  On such occasions a view of our galaxy from within is always striking and usually memorable. I’ve been fortunate to visit many such remote places but either didn’t look upwards (why not?) or was hindered by the inevitable cloud.  Recently on a trip in 2016 to Arizona and Utah in the South West USA, such views were hampered by the full moon – timing is everything!  However, there have been two occasions when the darkness was so complete that I found the view of the Milky Way to be not only incredible but quiet profound – first in the Kalahari desert in Botswana and subsequently on a scuba diving trip whilst motoring southwards along the middle of the Red Sea at night with the boat’s lights turned off.

Notwithstanding, since my interest in astronomy started a few years ago I have yet to successfully image the Milky Way, which has remained resolutely elusive to my camera sensor.  I have tried a few times at Fairvale Observatory but the night sky here at best rates 5 on the Bortle scale and makes such imaging almost impossible.  Then whilst in the Arizona desert last year (see above) and on other occasions I have been thwarted by a full moon.  Apart from the obvious problem of light pollution I was beginning to wonder if I was doing something wrong but no, it was the sky conditions.

Finally during September this year, whilst camping in Dorset on the Isle of Purbeck just west of Corfe Castle, I at last managed to image the all elusive galaxy – our galaxy (see top of page).  Looking south across the Purbeck hills towards the English Channel, the Milky Way was revealed in all its glory traversing the clear, very dark sky which itself was pierced by the vivid light of the myriad of stars; it is on such occasions I realise just what I’m missing at home.  Once accustomed to the darkness the form and some detail of the Milky Way could be clearly discerned with the naked eye but of course the camera saw a lot more.

Some processing shows good detail of the Milky Way but at ISO 6400 is too noisy

Using my unmodded Canon 700D DSLR and an ultra wide-angle 10mm lens, for the first time I was able to capture some reasonable images of the Milky Way.  All were shot on a static tripod between 15 and 20 second exposures at ISO 6,400; I had set-up the camera on the Vixen Polarie for tracking but could not obtain a favourable view of the galaxy in this way.  From this experience next time I would reduce the ISO to at least 3,200 or less and increase the exposure time based on the ‘Rule of 500’ to about 30 seconds.  However, for now I’m happy with the result and hope the next opportunity doesn’t take another  lifetime coming.