Help with Photopills

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Fordsabroad

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Gordon
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Excuse this if if I am being a numpty! I am hoping to do some milky way shots this year and I know very little about locating said beast. I have Photopills which I believe to be the dogs doo dahs for planning these things. I am planning a trip to Scotland in my tiny motorhome in May passing through Glencoe and roughly following the NC500 route. When looking at Photopills on my phone it says "always invisible" for Glencoe, Castle stalker and other locations. A search of Flickr shows this not to be the case. Have I got some setting wrong ( I certainly have the dates and locations correct). I am hoping someone here can point me in the right direction (no pun intended) before I trawl through hours of Youtube vids.
 
I’ve been looking at exactly the same thing with Photopills this weekend.

The “always invisible” refers to the galactic core, which is below the horizon for the dates you are checking (and for quite a lot of the year up there it turns out). But you can still get really good Milky Way pictures anyway.

There’s a REALLY good tutorial for Milky Way photography on Photopills’s own YouTube channel which should be the first one to take a look at.
 
Generally, that time is year, the Milky Way is at its highest/ most visible before sunrise in the south east direction early hours of the morning before sunrise.
 
Thanks for your replies. The fact that the core of the MW is below the horizon now makes the "Aways invisible" statement understandable. LeeRatters thanks for your input which is very useful as I want to photograph the MW at Stonehenge which is only just over an hour away.
 
Fordsabroad said:
Thanks for your replies. The fact that the core of the MW is below the horizon now makes the "Aways invisible" statement understandable. LeeRatters thanks for your input which is very useful as I want to photograph the MW at Stonehenge which is only just over an hour away.
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Stonehenge is awesome at night. We done MW last summer. I want to get there for Orion in the next month or two!

MW there is better later in the season as it's in a less light polluted part of the sky - Salisbury is just a few miles south south east.
 
Fordsabroad said:
Excuse this if if I am being a numpty! I am hoping to do some milky way shots this year and I know very little about locating said beast. I have Photopills which I believe to be the dogs doo dahs for planning these things. I am planning a trip to Scotland in my tiny motorhome in May passing through Glencoe and roughly following the NC500 route. When looking at Photopills on my phone it says "always invisible" for Glencoe, Castle stalker and other locations. A search of Flickr shows this not to be the case. Have I got some setting wrong ( I certainly have the dates and locations correct). I am hoping someone here can point me in the right direction (no pun intended) before I trawl through hours of Youtube vids.
Click to expand...

Also have a look at Stellarium(it is free for PCs, Macs and the Linux OS). It can be set for any location and any time of the year, and will show what you can see in any direction.

The galactic core is never really well seen from the UK, it is always fairly close to (or below) the southern horizon, depending how far north you are. However, we still have good views of the other parts of the MW. You should be able to find plenty of dark places in Scotland in May to try for the MW as long as you stay up late. In Glencoe, for example, the sun doesn't set until about 9:30pm in mid May.

Dave
 
Once again the advice received from members of this forum is invaluable, saving many wasted hours (and trips). I also hope to head to St Michael's mount later in the year. I am planning to visit the Gower peninsula at the end of March so maybe there will be an opportunity at the Mumbles or Whiteford lighthouse. One of the few benefits of retirement is time to enjoy my hobby.
 
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