Enter any location on Earth to see the best nights for your selected year to photograph the Milky Way — moon phase, dark-sky windows, and the Galactic Core's position, computed for your exact coordinates. Free, no account required.
By Robert Bridgewater · Last updated
Everything on this page tells you when the sky is dark and the Galactic Core is well placed. It can't tell you whether the ground you're standing on is actually dark. A night can hit every mark above — new moon, clear astronomical darkness, core high overhead — and still produce a washed-out, colourless sky if you're shooting from underneath a dome of artificial light. That's a separate variable, and it's worth understanding before you drive anywhere.
Streetlights, car parks, and towns don't just shine light sideways — a good portion of it scatters upward and bounces off moisture and dust in the atmosphere, creating a dull orange glow (called skyglow) that sits over an entire region. It doesn't take a nearby light to ruin a shot; a town 20–30 miles away can be enough to bury the fainter parts of the Milky Way's band, even while the sky above you looks reasonably dark to the naked eye.
In 2001, amateur astronomer John Bortle published a nine-step scale for describing how much skyglow limits what you can see at a given location — Class 1 being the darkest skies left on Earth, Class 9 being a brightly lit city centre. Photographers borrowed the scale because it maps almost directly onto “will the Milky Way actually show up in this photo.”
Excellent to rural dark sky. The Milky Way isn't just visible — it's the main subject, with dust lanes and structure clearly resolved.
Rural/suburban transition. Still very shootable — the core is clearly visible, though it loses some fine detail and contrast compared to a truly dark site.
Bright suburban to urban. The core may appear as a faint brightening at best — treat it as a stretch goal, not a guarantee, and expect a lot of post-processing.
City centre. The Milky Way is effectively invisible to a camera. Point your gear at the Moon or planets instead.
A few free online light-pollution maps let you search any coordinates and see a colour-coded overlay of sky brightness — typically running from black/blue (darkest) through green, yellow, and orange, up to red (brightest). Some also list an estimated Bortle class alongside weather and cloud-cover forecasts for a specific spot. Worth bookmarking one and cross-checking it against whatever date this calendar tells you is your best night. Bortle awareness built directly into this tool is on our roadmap.
This calendar tells you exactly when the Galactic Core is up, dark, and well placed. It can't dial in your camera for you. Get the settings below wrong on the night and none of that timing work pays off — here's the shortlist worth knowing before you head out.
Wide open — f/2.8 or faster if your lens has it. A closed-down aperture at night mostly just loses you light, not sharpness.
3200–6400 as a starting point on most cameras; some full-frame bodies stay clean up to 8000. A higher ISO with a correctly exposed histogram often produces less usable noise than underexposing at a “safe” low ISO.
Set it manually, roughly 4000–4500K, rather than leaving it on auto. Auto white balance drifts frame to frame, which shows up as inconsistent sky colour if you're stitching a panorama.
Shoot RAW, turn off long-exposure noise reduction, and turn the LCD brightness down — a bright screen at night tricks you into thinking an underexposed shot looks fine. Check the histogram instead of the preview.
Leave the shutter open too long at a wide aperture and stars stop being points and start being short streaks — the Earth's rotation catches up with you. The reference photographers use for this is the NPF rule, which factors in your aperture, sensor pixel pitch, and focal length together — a higher-resolution sensor reveals trailing sooner than a lower-resolution one at the same settings, which simpler rules of thumb ignore. It's not something you work out by hand in the field; apps like PhotoPills have an NPF calculator built in — enter your camera and lens and it gives you a maximum exposure time on the spot.
Finding a strong composition in the dark, on unfamiliar ground, is nearly impossible — and it's a safety issue if you don't already know what's around you (drop-offs, tides, terrain). Visit the location while it's still light, work out your foreground against the direction this calendar gives you for your date, and come back after dark already knowing where to set up.
Everything above tells you when the astronomy lines up — moon phase, darkness, and where the core sits in the sky. That part doesn't change once it's calculated. What still matters on the night itself is the atmosphere between you and the sky, and that's a much more fluid picture:
Cloud cover on the night itself
A clear forecast three days out doesn't mean a clear sky at 11pm. What matters is how much cloud is actually overhead when you're standing there, and whether it's clearing or building.
Wind
Long exposures need a stable tripod. A breezy ridge or exposed coastline can blur out fine detail in the core even on an otherwise perfect night.
Atmospheric haze & humidity
A sky can look clear to the eye and still be hazy enough to flatten contrast and mute the core or band's structure in a photo.
Fog and dew risk
Conditions can shift fast in the hours before dawn, especially near water or in valleys, exactly when the core is often best placed.
Storm and precipitation risk nearby
Even if it's dry overhead, a system building nearby can bring cloud in from the edges just as your shooting window opens.
Don't spend your evening comparing five forecasts and second-guessing the sky. ShotScout watches your saved locations and flags the rare nights when the Milky Way, darkness, and conditions all line up — so you only get told about the nights actually worth setting an alarm for.
| Free Milky Way Calendar | ShotScout Subscription |
|---|---|
| Shows when the astronomy lines up | Tells you whether conditions make it worth shooting |
| One location and year at a time | Watches your saved locations continuously |
| Moon, darkness, core position | Also cloud, haze, wind, humidity, dew, and precipitation |
| Plan ahead | Get notified when to act |
And it's not just the Milky Way. Every night, ShotScout's reports also watch for your best opportunities across:
This calendar shows when the Milky Way is possible. ShotScout watches the conditions that decide whether it'll actually be worth photographing — then lets you know when a great night is forming at the places you care about.
Plan the year here, for free, always. ShotScout's condition alerts are launching soon — join the early-access list to get them for your saved locations first.