Finding Darkness in the Night Sky (Patreon)

I'm fortunate to live in the sparsely populated interior of the western United States. My home state, Utah, has five national parks and several large national monuments. Most of these areas boast Bortle Class skies of a "2" or darker (see the chart below).

Many of you are not that lucky. So, how do you find areas close to you that are dark enough to see and photograph decent starry night skies?

I start with the free light pollution maps on Dark Site Finder. Although their color scale uses 15 colors instead of the eight in the Bortle scale, the principle are basically same: the green-yellow colors are in the middle (suburban to rural transition), the red-orange are the more heavily light polluted areas (white reveals the inner city areas), and the blue-gray areas are the most rural, with dark gray having the darkest skies.

The 117-year old barn in the above photos, is only 35 miles away from the heavy light pollution of Salt Lake City, Utah (my home), yet it has a fairly decent Milky Way sky behind it. How is that possible, since the skies above this barn are in a Bortle Class 5? That's because the skies just a few miles behind the barn are in a class 3, and even further behind they approach a class 2. My friend, Jack Fusco, uses this principle to photograph the starry night sky even along the shores of New Jersey! That's because, only a few miles out, across the ocean, the night skies start to quickly darken, and eventually reach a Bortle Class of 1. In other words, the sky darkness behind your foreground can be more important to your photograph than the sky directly above it.

You'll also need to understand the orientation of the stars in the night sky. For instance, in the Northern Hemisphere, the core of the Milky Way (the brightest part) typically is in the southeastern region of the sky in the spring. In the early to mid-summer, it is in the southern part of the sky. In the late-summer to autumn, it is in the southwestern portion of the night sky. You'll also notice that the orientation of the Milky Way is quite horizontal, or more parallel to the horizon in the spring; it's diagonal in the early summer; and it becomes more vertical later in the summer and into the fall.

Combine your knowledge of the Milky Way orientation during the seasons and the light pollution maps, and you'll be surprised how many "dark sky" shooting locations you might be able to find in your area! Once you find the best areas, scout them during the daytime to find interesting features to place in your foreground compositions.