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Best Northern Hemisphere Milky Way Viewing in 2013: Next 2 Weeks

Since our solar system is way out in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, the brightest part from our vantage point is towards the more dense galactic center.  Due to the tilt of the earth's axis as we rotate around the sun, not only is the sun higher in the sky in the Summer for Northern Hemisphere viewers, but also our view towards this much brighter portion of the Milky Way gets much better in the weeks before and after the June 21 Summer solstice.

In the Spring it can take the galactic center of the Milky Way a little time to rise above the horizon so you may not see it until early morning, but the rise time gets earlier every month.  Sunset varies with your position on the earth, but in general by July it's coming up by the time stars are visible in the sky after sunset.  (Of course if you're near or above the Arctic Circle, you don't have night this time of year, so your'e out of luck.)

The brightness of the moon interferes with visibility of the Milky Way, so the best viewing is within a few days before or after the new moon, when the moon is not visible or a slim crescent, and it appears close to the sun in our sky so it is not visible in the night sky.  

The new moon this July will be July 8, so the best Milky Way viewing dates in 2013 (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere south of the Arctic Circle) arguably would be July 4 – 12.  In the July 6-9 time frame the moon won't be in the night sky at all.  When it's visible at all, it'll only be visible as a slim crescent during twilight hours.

Blog: www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com/blog
Prints: www.JeffSullivan.smugmug.com

The Milky Way in the Eastern Sierra in August

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131 thoughts on “Best Northern Hemisphere Milky Way Viewing in 2013: Next 2 Weeks”

  111. Michael Glenn
    Reply

    happy its not downloadable actually, downloadable should be limited to the mediocre images out there, unless you can attach a sales cart to the download, and protect your license

  113. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    I spend thousands of dollars each year to capture photographs +Sheetal MG, and I only recover that investment when people choose to buy them.  My photographs should not be free for the taking any more than someone's car is free for the taking.  If you'd like to give me your car, when I receive the car, I can send you a copy of this photograph.

  114. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    Couldn't agree more +Michael Glenn.  Photography will continue to have value only to the extent that people do not undercut that value by giving work away below cost.  

    The cost of a photograph involves a lot more than simply covering the expenses involved with the equipment, travel and time, as this example shows:
    Why Wedding Photographers’ Prices are “Wack” http://petapixel.com/2012/01/26/why-wedding-photographers-prices-are-wack/

    The first Internet site which builds a business model benefitting photographers instead of taking advantage of them and encouraging a crash in the market value of photographs (encouraging free downloads for example) will be the site offering the most compelling photography.  Photography is content, just like the sites Google rewards with $ when ads are served.  If Google doesn't pay photographers a share of the revenue for ads served with their photographs, surely someone else will.

  116. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    More important than the cash flow itself +Michael Glenn, thank of the new travel and shots that cash flow would finance!  Internet sites are limited in how many stunning photographs they can treat their visitors to in a day, but the photographers creating the most stunning photographs are limited only by their budget to reach the best places to create stunning photographs.  A site partnering with photographers to enable them to spend more time out would generate more stunning photographs from the most competent photographers best suited to produce them.

    In a sense, photography has not truly of fully "gone digital" until the market side, where the valuable photographs are sold, has fully been automated and "disintermediated", where the photographer has direct access to markets, whether it's for screen backgrounds and screen savers, prints, digital downloads (stock photography), or simply revenue from licensed placement in an ad.  The market for photographs could be grown considerably in the same way that iTunes revolutionized the music industry and grew its revenue.  Current Internet business models involving online use of photos are unnecessarily limited, and small-minded towards the contributing photographers so strategic to their success.

  128. Donna Shinn
    Reply

    Yes Jeff I do want this particular one. I've looked on your site but didn't find. It sings to my soul. It questions my mind. Sets my heart on a journey, a mystery to find. Please let me know when where I can find purchasing info.

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