I grew up in a valley in southern Oregon, where the Milky Way was a routine part of the night sky. Disappointed that though the Vermont village I live in is small, and has a good view of the sky, I can see few stars at all, let alone the milky way– the village has highway style street lighting that obscures everything, including the auroras and lightning bugs!

Pensive its mentioned the little serving as an example of my research results see into or see visions- http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/photo-galleries/category/107-l

Shows the sun pop into view half way.

This is an awesome image of us on earth being able to see where the sun is positioned in milkyway.

I never knew we were this far out from the galaxy center.

http://www.keithwiley.com/pictures/astroPhoto/widefield/milkyWayMosaic.jpg

One of the most incredible sights in the sky, second only to a naked eye Andromeda, five times larger than the moon, which really puts it all in perspective in my opinion.

On that note, does anyone know of a night-after-night animation of the whole Milky Way? Can we watch the stars (or clumps of stars) revolving around the core, or is it too slow to capture in any reasonable length of time?

It would be incredibly easy enough to photograph that! Just set your camera on a time lapse setting lasting, oh, a couple hundred million years.

BECAUSE WE DON’T GET TO SEE THAT ANYMORE.

I mean LOOK AT THAT, that’s GORGEOUS. But there’s so few places in the U.S. where you can even see STARS anymore, much less THAT.

@ Dave

We can see it because we’re about 2/3 of the way out from the core I think. So what you’re seeing, I think, is essentially an edge on view in towards the core.

How can anyone can see the Milky Way from Earth when the Earth is part of the Milky Way? Is it just that at certain times, we are able to view the edge of our Galaxy from a point that allows us to see the largest collection of stars?

Not all the things you can see in the sky are stars. There are other galaxies out there, too.

But you are correct. As the Earth spins, it brings the center of the Milky Way (the most concentrated portion) into our view. Its like we’re on the ferris wheel, sometimes looking in toward the center, and sometimes looking out and away from the center.

I have a question: I’m planning a trip to Death Valley, and I can find the moon rise times allright, but I can’t find the times when the milky way rises. Does anybody have link?

Thanks in advance,
Pieter.

Yes, meteors would be a streak that only showed up for one frame. A series of streaks that move uniformly across the field are probably satellites (each streak being 20 seconds worth of its travel. Streaks that are not uniform (i.e. change speed or direction) would be airplanes.

BTW, I have to take back what I said earlier about the communication satellites. I went back and watched the high-rez video again (several times, actually) and noticed the dim, unmoving dots in lots of different places. They couldn’t be commsats since they would all have to be in a row along the celestial equator. More likely artifacts of this particular camera. Dang!

- Jack