Night Sky Photo Tours 2016

The Night Sky Photo Tours 2016 Season has started! Getting out at night to capture images of the Milky Way is a wondrous experience. The crisp air, the urgent anticipation, the (hopefully!) successful end of your planning, all these add to the excitement.

If you would like more details on the technical side of capturing night sky images, sutter speeds, aperture and the like, here is a link.

To capture clear images of the bright stars you need to schedule your effort when there is no moon in the sky. Otherwise the stars are washed out by the brightness of the moon. On the Lunar calendar, the New Moon is where there is no moon in the sky.

Here is a schedule of the New Moon for the next few months:

April 7th
May 6th
June 4th
July 4th
August 2nd
September 1st
September 30th
October 30th

The best times to go shoot the Milky Way are plus/minus 2 days of the New Moon.

If you would like to schedule a Night Sky Photo Tour, here is the link with the details and registration info.

There are two types of Night Sky Photo Tours: Drive-In Tours, where we drive to a location along the North Cascades Highway or the Mount Baker Highway and capture images AND Hike-In Tours where we don backpacks and hike into a more remote location, such as a Fire Lookout, to spend the night.

All of the details can be found here!

Here are a few images from recent outings.