How To Shoot The Milky Way

Discover expert tips for capturing the night sky in all its glory, with astrophotographer Alyn Wallace

- Alyn Wallace

ALYN WALLACE

Alyn Wallace is a landscape astrophotographer and YouTuber from South Wales. His work has been featured by the likes of NASA, National Geographic and BBC Earth, and he won the Landscapes at Night category in Landscape Photographer of the Year 2020. He has designed and released the Starglow filter with Kase, and the Z and V Star Tracker platforms with Move Shoot Move, and is the author of the upcoming book Photographing The Night Sky.

To see more of Andy’s work, visit: @alynwallace www.youtube.com/c/AlynWallace www.alynwallacephotography.com

How many of us have looked up at the night sky and wondered at its vastness? Most of us, right? But relatively few of us will have ever tried to capture the stunning light show in all its glory. Astrophotography becomes complex when you start trying to capture deep space images, so in this feature we’re going to focus on capturing the Milky Way, our own galaxy, consisting of countless stars. In fact, astronomers estimate that there are around 100 to 300 billion stars twinkling in the glowing band in the sky.

Most photographers want their Milky Way to inspire the viewer. But from a technical perspective, these images would ideally be sharp, bold and colourful too. Low-light capabilities and high-ISO handling on DSLR and mirrorless cameras have improved enormously over the past decade, opening up astrophotography to the masses, but the genre is still challenging, whatever your gear.