How to See the Milky Way and Its Core

The Milky Way core is up in a dark sky from March to September, longest in June

The core, the bright center of the galaxy in Sagittarius and Scorpius, is the part most people mean by seeing the Milky Way. It lies at declination -29°, so from the northern United States it stays low in the south. In early spring it rises before dawn; by summer it is up all evening; by October it sets in the west soon after dark. Outside March to September it is up for only a few minutes in a dark sky, low in the twilight. These are the hours on the 15th of each month when the galactic center is at least 10° up and the sky is fully dark, with the Sun 18° below the horizon:

Times are local standard time near the middle of a time zone; add an hour for daylight time, and up to half an hour either way toward the edges of the zone. The core is lower and its window shorter the farther north you are; from 50°N it barely clears the southern horizon.

The band needs a moonless sky of Bortle class 4 or darker

The Bortle scale rates night skies from 1, the darkest, to 9, an inner-city sky. In Bortle 4, a rural sky with some light domes on the horizon, the summer Milky Way is visible with little detail; in Bortle 1 to 3 it shows dust lanes and casts its own faint glow. From a suburb, Bortle 5 to 6, it is faint or gone. The Moon matters as much: plan for the week around new Moon, or nights when the Moon sets before the core rises. Find sites on the dark sky places and Bortle class 1 sites lists.

Under a dark sky the band shows star clouds, dust lanes and nebulae you can name

• The Great Rift: a dark lane of dust that splits the band from Cygnus to Sagittarius.
• The Sagittarius Star Cloud: the brightest patch, toward the galactic center, above the spout of the Teapot.
• The Lagoon and Trifid nebulae and M24: visible by eye as knots in the band, and showpieces in binoculars.
• The Cygnus star clouds: overhead on late-summer evenings, with the North America Nebula.
• The winter Milky Way: fainter, through Auriga, Gemini and Orion, looking out of the galaxy rather than into it.

For what the band is, from the spiral arms to the black hole at the center, see the Milky Way galaxy.

A wide lens, a tripod and 15 to 25 seconds show the core's color

Use a lens of 14 to 24 mm at its widest aperture, ISO 3200 to 6400, and an exposure short enough to keep the stars from trailing: about 500 divided by the focal length, in seconds, on a full-frame camera, or 300 divided by the focal length on a crop-sensor camera. Many phones now take a usable Milky Way photo in night mode on a tripod. Stacking several frames lowers the noise, and a star tracker allows longer exposures.

The Magellanic Clouds rise only south of about 20°N: none of the mainland United States sees them

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, 160,000 and 200,000 light-years away, which look like detached pieces of the Milky Way to the eye. They lie near the south celestial pole, at declinations of about -70° and -73°, so they never rise north of about 20°N and 17°N. From the southernmost point of Hawaii's Big Island, at 19°N, the Large Cloud barely clears the horizon in winter. To see them well, go south of the equator, where they are circumpolar from about 20°S and highest on evenings from November to February. A good first trip is to Chile's Atacama Desert, Namibia, or Australia's outback.

Both are easy naked-eye objects from a dark southern site: the Large Cloud is about 10° across, the Small Cloud about 5°, with the globular cluster 47 Tucanae beside it. The Large Cloud holds the Tarantula Nebula, visible by eye. See the Milky Way's satellite galaxies and the Southern Skies Binocular list.