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PlanIt! for
Photographers
ALL-IN-ONE PLANNING APP FOR LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHERS
QUICK USER GUIDES
Night Photography
Stars etc.
The Stars and Star-trails page offers many functions. The
first function is to find out the major stars, planets, Tap on the star name, you will see the star list which can be filtered
constellations and nebula position on the sky at any time by different types. You can even filter them by their positions.
and location. See the red circled area below. For example, you are doing deep sky photography for a nebula. You
want it to be high enough but not too high. The east side has a big
city so you want to avoid light pollution from that direction. Then
you can select the elevation angle to be from 20 to 70, all direction
1 except east. See the screenshot on the right.

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Star-trails and Star-trails Simulation
The second function is to find out when is a good time to
start star-trail photo. Thats when the night is dark enough If you setup the plan, you can also preview the star-trails length and
and (optionally) without being affected by moon. composition in the viewfinder. This simulation below is the star-trails
starting from 18:16 to 22:29. As you can see, I aligned the Polaris with
the Upper Yosemite Fall to create a more attractive composition.

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1

Dark night starting time or Duration Star-trail Dark night ending time or the Polaris
the moonset time if there is swiping angle moonrise time if there is

Play to preview
Noted that we consider the
the star-trails
moonrise and moonset when
calculating the starting and 5
2 ending time. This can be changed The period
when the
in the settings Moon allowed for moon is visible
star-trails. If you are okay with a
small moon, you can change the The yellow line means the 4
settings to crescent moon for period when the selected
example. Then we will allow a star is visible. In this case, it
crescent on the sky when stops when the moon rises.
calculating the time.
Avoid Star-trails 500 rule
Another function of this page is to find out the maximum Sometimes you see a
shutter speed you can use in order to avoid the star-trails. superscript +1 after
It is so called 500 rules. the time value like the
one. It means it is a
To get to the 500 rule, tap What does this mean is: in order 4 time of the next day of
this toggle button to avoid star movement in your the current date.
1 photo, if you are using 14 mm
lens, you need to keep the
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If the superscript 1- is
shutter speed less than 36
before the time value, it
seconds.
means the a time of the
You can tap on the focal length previous day of the
2 value to change the focal length. current date.

You can select another rule to avoid the star-trails. The 600 rule is looser than the 500 rule. If
you can using a slow lens (slower than f4 for example), you can consider using this one. The CoC
rule (CoC means circle of confusion) is a rule we invented. The theory behind this rule is to
calculate the movement of star so that it causes any blurriness on the camera sensor. The CoC
rule is the strictest of all three rules. If you have a faster lens (faster than f2 for example, usually
a prime lens), you may consider adopt this rule to archive the maximum sharpness of the stars
on your photos.
The Milky Way

Background Knowledge

The Milky Way is a very interesting subject for night sky The Milky Way, just like the rest of the stars, is not moving
photography. For those who never see the Milky Way in relative to the Earth center (at least in the length of our
their whole life, the first sight of it is breath-taking. The human beings lifespan). It is the Earths self-rotation that
Milk Way looks like a 360 band around the Earth. We, as makes the Milky Way looks like moving. Although we use 24
we are on the Earth, can only see half of the whole band. hours as a day (solar day), it takes the Earth 23 hours, 56
Some part of the band is dim. What photographers are minutes and 4.1 seconds to rotate once (also known as
interested most is the brightest part of the band - the sidereal day). In the other word, if you see the Milky Way at a
Milky Way Center, which is also known as the galaxy center certain position on the sky at 9:00 pm tonight, after 23 hours,
or the galaxy core. We call it MWC in short in this app. 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds, which is about 8:56 pm
tomorrow, you will see it again at the exact same position.
Then the day after tomorrow will be at 8:52 pm, and so on.

I will have to cover some background At any location on the Earth, the Milky Way moves and
knowledge of how the Milky Way moves. repeats itself every day. However, in some cases, the sky is
Otherwise you will have trouble too bright to see the Milky Way. So finding the Milky Way is
understanding the design of the two Milky not really about finding the position (because the positions
Way related pages in the app. are fixed), but about finding the time that is dark enough.

If you get it, you can continue. Otherwise please read it again
until you get it ;-)
Two Milky Way Pages
We put all Milky Way related features to two pages When to use which page?
Milky Way Center: it shows the Milky Way Center
position as well as its azimuth range and elevation angle
range.
If you want to find out whether you can see Milky
Way tonight or on a fixed date, check the Milky Way
Center page. You can use it in combination with the
Event page as the Event page will show the list of
events when the MWC or MW arch is at certain
Milky Way Seeker: this page finds out the list of position.
dates/times when the sky is dark enough to see the Milky
Way at a certain position.
If you want to decide which nights to go to a place
to take Milky Way photos of a certain composition,
use Milky Way Seeker page to find out all the
possible nights.
 Milky Way Center
Lets set our camera location at the Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park. With the Half Dome and nice view on the
east, it is a perfect location to take Milky Way Arch photos. On May 1,2017, the Milky Way Center is visible from 11:47
PM to 4:23 AM. The superscript 1- before 11:47 PM means the time is in the previous day. 4h37 is the duration.

For the whole duration mentioned above, the

MWC elevation angle range is 0 to 23.3,
azimuth range is 127.8 to 184.5. At the
current time (1:25 AM, see the time on the
bottom), the MWC is at 13.5 elevation angle
and 144.6 azimuth.
1 You can actually see the MW shape on
the map (left) but it is very hard to
visualize. Thats why we created a MWC
simulated viewfinder view of it (see the
right)
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MWC Wow, viewfinder view is way cooler, but does
the map view have any use in this case? Yes.
2 You can see where the moon is on the map
mode but you cant see it in the VF view if the
MWC moon is in the back. Sometimes, you can take
Visible Period foreground pictures when the moon is up ,
Moon
then take MW arch pictures when the moon is
Visible Period down, and blend them together in post
processing a technique many night
photographers use.
Milky Way Seeker
From the previous MWC page, we found out that we can take MW arch over the Half Dome on
May 1, 2017. However, you may not have time to visit the place. So an obvious question would
be what other dates are also possible to take the same photo? Just switch to Milky Way Seeker
page.

Changing the time range to the whole

1 year of 2017, you will see it says 122
results immediately. Just tap on it to Moon
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see the result list on the right. Elevation.
Very important
You can see from the right, when taking
2/16/2017 is the first date in 2017 MW photos
when you can see MW archs top at
30 elevation angle. However, it is
not a good time to go. Why? Just
pay attention to the Sun elevation. It
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was at -18.2 elevation on 5:17 AM,
which means it is about to rise. In
addition to the Sun, there is also a
gibbous moon high in the sky.
Filtering the MW Results
Now we got 123 results back, but they dont have the same light condition. We need to
study them carefully to find the best choices. The first thing we can use is the filters. If
you recall the Sun/Moon Finder results, there is also a similar filter area.

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Usually I will select No Moon and
Crescent Moons. It cuts the results
down to 68. No moon is good
because the night will be so dark that
the MW will be very bright. Crescent
moon is also good as it will light up
the foreground while the MW is still
okay.
Finding the Perfect Nights
Now I applied one more filter only the weekends. Here is a list of dates in 2017 when
you could possible take the photos during weekends when there is no moon or with a
crescent moon. Not many opportunities!

But there is one more thing we 2

1 havent considered. Glacier point
doesnt open all year long. It
closes in the winter and opens in Glacier Point Glacier Point
the spring. From the table on the Year Opened Closed
right, you can see the list of dates 2016 Apr 19 Nov 16
when it opens. Even if it opens
on March 28 which is the earliest 2015 Mar 28 Nov 2
date in the last 7 years, there 2014 Apr 14 Nov 28
only 11 days that are possible. If
it would open May 29 as in 2010, 2013 May 3 Nov 18
there is only 1 possible day.
2012 Apr 20 Nov 8
2011 May 27 Nov 19
Hope from this example, you can
2010 May 29 Nov 7
see how important it is to plan
ahead, and how easy this app is Data from : https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/tiogaopen.htm
can be combined with other
resources to plan it out.
Meteor Showers
During a meteor shower, we might see such a meteor anywhere in the sky but the direction of motion, when traced back,
will point to the radiant. A meteor that does not point back to the known radiant for a given shower is known as
a sporadic and is not considered part of that shower. When we photograph a meteor shower, our goal is to capture as many
meteors as possible, which means we need to point the camera as the right location on the sky.

The three dates are the starting, Tap on the meteor showers name will
peak and ending date of the allow you to choose a meteor shower. We
meteor shower. You can long listed over 20 meteor showers. The big
press on one of them to set the ones are Quadrantids in January, Perseids
current date to it. In the in August, and Geminids in December.
viewfinder, we will only show the
meteor shower icon at its position 1
when the current day is between
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the starting and the ending date.
The date is usually white. If green, For any meteor showers, we listed two
it means the current date is in the important factors to determine if the
range so the meteor shower is meteor shower is good. ZHR, also known
active as Zenithal Hourly Rate which is the
number of meteors a single observer
would see in an hour of peak activity.
Meteor Shower
Visible Period
The second factor is r-value which
indicates the magnitude distribution of a
meteor shower. It ranges 2.0 to 3.0, from
Moon
the brightest to the dimmest. Anything
Visible Period
below 2.5 are considered as bright.
 Composition in Meteor Showers
To capture as many as meteors as possible, First of all, I choose a date in the meteor shower
you should include the meteor shower radiant active period. In this example, I selected the night
in the frame and leave some margin around it of Aug 13-14, 2018 because it is a crescent moon If you are doing a timelapse,
so that you can capture the whole meteor that night. Secondly, I choose 14 mm lens so that it you dont need to worry
trace. capture a very wide angle of view. Now I will decide about this one but if you will
my composition in the simulated viewfinder. post processing all meteors
into one picture, there is one
more thing you need to pay
attention when you compose
the frame. You want to
These two angles are position of the meteor
1
include the Polaris in the
shower radiant.
2 frame if possible. Why?
Because the stars are moving
Starting so when we merge all
In the viewfinder, I set the time to the Position meteors into one, we will
starting time when the sky is dark
rotate the sky portion so that
enough (without moon if possible). Ending the stars are aligned. Having
Then I drag the time slider to see the
meteor shower icon moves across the
Position
3 Polaris will make the rotation
easier. Please watch this video
viewfinder until the sky gets bright. I will
by David Kingham to find out
make sure it is visible in the frame for
more.
the whole period with enough margin.
https://youtu.be/u7JVwSX1iAg

Meteor Shower Polaris, which

Visible Period doesnt move
Moon
Visible Period
 Dark Sky
For any astrophotography, finding a dark location is the most important step. With the light pollution from the
modern urban expansion, we see less and less stars. Thats why we build in a dark sky map into the app.

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The Bortle
scale for this
location

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Choose a different You can tap on the
unit to describe the dark sky value or the
dark sky. We use the color circle to find
bortle scale by
default because it is
out what the value
means.
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a simple number
from 1 to 9. Tap a row if you
want to change the
default dark sky unit
Bortle Scale

1: Excellent dark-sky site Good

2: Typical truly dark site
3: Rural sky
4: Rural/suburban transition
5: Suburban sky
Possible
6: Bright suburban sky
7: Suburban/urban transition
8: City sky
9: Inner-city sky

Bad