Pro tip: A clear night in Flagstaff taught me to check the moon phase before planning a shoot.

I drove up to Arizona last Tuesday hoping to capture the Milky Way, but a nearly full moon washed out the whole sky. I got home with over a hundred useless, bright gray images. Does anyone have a good app or site for tracking lunar brightness specifically for astrophotography?

3 comments

3 Comments

clairem4726d ago

I read a piece in a photography magazine that said the best dark sky window is about five days before or after the new moon. I use an app called PhotoPills now, which shows a moon phase calendar and a "night" filter for planning. It has a neat feature where you can see the moon's position overlaid on an augmented reality view of your location. That saved me from a similar mistake last fall. It's not free, but it was worth the one-time cost for me.

paigesullivan18d ago

Five days seems like plenty to me. People get way too caught up in perfect conditions and forget to just go take pictures. A little moonlight isn't going to ruin everything, it just changes what you're shooting.

hannah_hart9325d ago

That five day rule is a good start, but I've found it's not nearly enough. The moon's brightness messes with the sky long before it's technically full. I plan for a solid ten days of dark sky, from three days after the last quarter to three days before the first quarter. It sounds strict, but even a bright crescent moon can ruin the faint details in a wide field shot. I just use a basic moon phase calendar website and mark the blackout dates on my regular calendar.