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Comment by psykus | Hacker News Reader

Are there areas of the world with no light pollution where you see anything remotely like this with the naked eye? Any parts of the Milky Way?

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You won’t see anything like that with the naked eye, period. We can’t build up a composite of all photons our eye gathers over 1060 hours! There are places where you can get minimal light pollution and see amazing things though.

https://darksitefinder.com/map/

That site will help.

No, the best you can do unaided is just a general view of the Milky Way.

But if you're willing to accept some optical aids like a reflector and eye piece, a large amateur "light bucket" dobsonian telescope can unveil deep space objects to the naked eye.

I don't think it's possible to get anything like these photos though, the sensor is collecting light over a very long duration to present as a single image. The only way to get more light into your naked eye real-time is with more aperture, obviously there are practical limits there.

I've seen the Magellanic Clouds with my naked eye. I worked at an observatory in rural Argentina (location because light pollution). One night, I went out to one of the telescopes for emergency maintenance. When we got back out into the dark and hadn't turned on the headlamps of the car yet, the Milky Way stretched like a band across the sky, and you could see both Magellanic Clouds as small but macroscopic objects, indeed looking like clouds.

This was among the most breathtaking things I've ever seen (the other being a particularly vivid showing of northern lights in Alaska). The southern hemisphere's sky is infinitely more exciting than the northern one.

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