Best location for the Milky Way

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone knows a good location for photographing the Milky Way - directly or long exposure - would it be possible from the Dublin Mountains at night ?

Thanks a lot

Not being an astrophoto expert I would imagine that the city would interfere a lot with the length of time needed for the correct exposure to capture the Milky Way in all its glory.

A better bet might be to head deep into the Wicklow mountains, perhaps around Glenmalure, Dublin may still interfere, but not as much.

If you can travel Connemara with be ideal, so would Glenbeigh National Park in Donegal and the remoter parts of Cork and Kerry, especially near the coast.

Hope this helps.

Paul

Thats great - was hoping I might get away with somewhere closer to Dublin, but you are right. I might try Wicklow first and see how I get on.

Slieve Mann might be just the spot .

Thanks !

Rory - welcome to the boards!

Like Paul, I'm not an expert at the wide-field sky portrait imaging but there are few folks here that take some fantastic Milky Way images.

I would imagine you could go into the Dublin Mountains and if you chose the spot very carefully, I'd say you could still get what you're looking for. Sure, Dublin City will have an effect but that can be limited by choosing your spot carefully.

If it works out for you, I'd then think about the next step which would be to get to a much darker site as Paul says and take a second goat it and see how much of a difference there would be.

What kind of imaging gear are you using?

Thank you !

A Nikon D300 with a remote and tripod, and Lightroom for post processing.

I had a quick look on www.darksky.org and it does seem that the Glenamalure/ Laragh area is the darkest spot closest to Dublin. I'm sure there is a spot on top of Slieeve Maan I could setup the shot easily enough from. It would be great to get somewhere closer though.

Do you think that gear is enough ?

Rory

To be honest, I'm not the best person to ask about DSLR's for astrophotography. But I'd imagine the biggest issue will obviously be the maximum length of exeposure before you get star trails because you won't be guiding the image. I'm not sure what length of time that would be for that setup though - it would be easy enough to experiment though.

Of course, if you wanted a go at trailed stars - especially if you line up on the Pole Star, you can leave the imager running for as long as it will let you.

I'm sure the gear you have is good enough for something - but as many here on the boards will tell you, if you get into this astrophotography lark, be prepapred to get hooked and for your bank account to empty quickly if you're not disciplined enough

By the way, apologies for using the word 'imager' - take this as 'camera'...