Table of contents

• A window seat to the stars
• To strive ever Heavensward
• Finding the (Milky) Way
• My equipment
• Shooting for the stars
• The best laid plans of mice and men
• Bringing home the stars

A window seat to the stars

A couple of weeks ago, while sitting in seat 30K on an Asiana Airlines A350 making an overnight flight from London to Seoul, I was grinning like a Cheshire Cat as I posted on social media a photograph of my Leica Q3’s back LCD screen. The image review displayed the unedited RAW photo which I had taken of the wing of the A350 in which I was flying, and next to the wingtip was the Milky Way rising up from the distant horizon. After I made the post, I started getting notifications with people messaging me asking how I managed this shot. I thought it might be worth setting out here in detail in case it helps anyone else who might want to try a similar shot. It wasn’t as simple as just snapping a shot out of the window – there were a number of challenges to account for, from flight paths to camera settings, which I will explain in detail below.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Howard Cheng (@wherehowardgoes)

Despite the fact that I love photographing the aurora, some people are surprised to find out that I had never actually planned a shot of the Milky Way. One of my favourite aurora photographs does feature the Milky Way, but that was more because the Milky Way decided to be obnoxious and photobomb a photo I was shooting of the aurora in Norway. But having had a taste of being able to capture the Milky Way, it sparked a drive in me to plan out a specific shot to capture the Milky Way rather than it just being incidental feature I never intended to include in my frame.

To strive ever Heavensward

I have been travelling in aeroplanes ever since I was a child, sitting in window seats ranging from right at the back to right at the front of the aeroplane. But I always love being able to have a view out of the window where I can also see the wing – usually from the rear of the wing so I can see all the flaps and spoilers work their magic during take off and landing.

I was able to shoot the aurora from an aeroplane flying 39,000 ft above northern China and Beijing during the 10 May 2024 geomagnetic superstorm, and as amazing as such an experience and result that was, I could not help but feel that there was something missing from the photo every time I looked at it: it was the aeroplane’s wing that I felt was missing. Including it would have added a dynamic context to the frame.

After coming away from the 10 May 2024 geomagnetic superstorm, I started wondering if it might be possible to shoot the Milky Way during a flight. I started imaging what I would like such an image to look like. In my artistic imagination of the shot of the Milky Way from an aeroplane, I thought that ideally I would like to have the wing of the aeroplane in the frame – preferably one of those wings with wingtips – and then have the Milky Way somewhere in the frame nearish the wing. I was not actually too bothered about the orientation of the Milky Way in the frame, but I did want to capture the galactic core and galactic central point some 30,000 light years away, rather than a view of the outer spiral arm through which we move at 40,000 miles an hour, or so I am told about those figures by Eric Idle’s Galaxy Song from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

Finding the (Milky) Way

In the northern hemisphere, the galactic core is usually best viewed around the summer months in the southern sky. This means I would need a flight which flew from west to east, or east to west, with a window seat on the right side of the aeroplane for a west to east flight, or a window seat on the left side of the aeroplane for an east to west flight. I also needed the flight to encompass some hours of darkness in order for me to be able to shoot the Milky Way. I knew from experience that the British Airways flight BA7 from London Heathrow to Tokyo Haneda enters the night-time from Kazakhstan to around China / South Korea.

To find out the actual timings which the flight enters night-time, I use Flight Radar 24 which shows me the flight path for potential flight routes, as well as where daylight is throughout the flight. For BA7, Flight Radar 24 shows that a recent flight entered night-time over Kazakhstan at around 1510 UTC (UTC is Universal Coordinated Time, which practically is the same as GMT) and experiences dawn over South Korea at around 1951 UTC.

Screenshots from Flight Radar 24 showing when flight BA7 from London Heathrow to Tokyo Haneda experiences night-time along its flight path.

Although the precise location of the Milky Way’s galactic core in the night sky will vary according to date and time, the galactic core usually swings from south to the west throughout the night in the northern hemisphere. This means ideally the best time to try and shoot the Milky Way from an aeroplane would generally be when the flight is heading in a south-easterly direction to give a view of the south-western sky when looking out of the aeroplane’s window – for BA7 that would be when it is leaving Kazakhstan for Xinjiang, starting from around 1607 UTC. Being in the UK, I like using the web version of Stellarium as it does not require installing anything onto my computer, and does not require working out time differences to change the indicated time to the search location’s local time. This makes it very easy for me to work according to UTC, which is the aviation time standard since in winter, as the UK’ according’s time zone is UTC in winter, and in summer, we are at UTC +1.

For example, if I wanted to fly on BA7 in early September, Stellarium shows me that as BA7 is flying over Xinjiang – location set to Ürümqi on Stellarium – at around 1707 British Summer Time (1607 UTC +1), the Milky Way will be in the south-western sky. Although the main part of the galactic core has dipped below the horizon, there’s still enough of the colourful gas cloud associated with the galactic core still visible above the horizon.

Top: a screenshot of Flight Radar 24 showing flight BA7 on a south-easterly heading at around 1607 UTC.
Bottom: a screenshot of the web version of Stellarium showing that at 1707 BST (1607 UTC), the Milky Way will be in the south-west over Ürümqi, Xinjiang.

The final piece of the night sky puzzle which I could reasonable plan for was the moon. For shooting the stars, the moon can be an unwelcome source of light pollution, and so it would be ideal to plan a flight around a new moon, or plan the shooting time to be after the moon had set. I like flying on long-haul eastward flights departing on Friday because it means I arrive on Saturday and start off the weekend in my destination. The first Friday of September, 6 September 2024, was not long after the new moon on 3 September 2024. Stellarium indicated that the moon phase on 6 September 2024 would be at 11 per cent, but at any event it would have set below the horizon near Ürümqi by 1607 UTC.

Those of you who know your airlines may be astute enough to realise that the wingtip featured in my photograph of the Milky Way from the Airbus A350 in which I was flying is not a British Airways wingtip, but an Asiana Airlines one. That is because I decided not to go to Japan again this year – having just been to Japan earlier this year in May – but looked at flying to South Korea instead. Even so, the planning process is entirely the same.

Flight Radar 24 shows that Asiana Airlines flight OZ522 from London Heathrow to Seoul Incheon departs London at 1904 UTC but usually departs late. It leaves London and flies on a south-easterly course through Europe before flying over the Black Sea around the Romanian-Bulgarian border. Taking into account that meal service usually begins not long after take-off, a good time for a good view of the south-west might be when flight OZ522 is flying over Austria at around 2200 UTC. If the meal service was over and all the food cleared rather quickly, I could probably have started shooting whilst flying over Germany but take it from me from personal experience, it can get very messy if you try moving about too much whilst the seat tables are deployed with trays of meal remnants still on them.

Top: a screenshot of Flight Radar 24 showing Asiana Airlines flight OZ522 on a south-easterly course over Austria at around 2200 UTC.
Bottom: a screenshot of the web version of Stellarium showing the location of the Milky Way in the south-western sky over Austria at 2300 BST (2200 UTC).

Planning where to sit to get that view of the aeroplane’s wing with the southern sky is relative easy, but may require forking out some money to ensure you have a specific seat in advance if that is part of your plan. I usually like sitting fairly forward in the plane, especially for long-haul flights, but this would mean that I am without a view of the wing. Mid-aeroplane seats usually offer a view of the wing, but exit row sets can provide added comfort in terms of unlimited leg room in economy class. One thing to bear in mind is that not all window seats are created equal, and some window seats do not align well with the windows of the aeroplane. I find the seating maps on AeroLOPA rather helpful as they also give an indication of how the windows align with each row of seating.

My equipment

Having the right equipment is equally important to all the planning in relation to identifying the best time to try shooting the Milky Way during the flight. I generally like to bring the Leica Q3 with me on my travels because it is a compact and light all-in-one package giving me a 60-megapixel full-frame sensor with a brilliant fixed 28 mm f/1.7 lens, as well as IP52 rated sealing. The compact and light-weight of the Q3 is helpful when you know you are travelling on your own and do not want too big a camera to be to be butterfingered with whilst trying to avoid being a klutz with everything else that you are carrying.

My camera of choice may not be suitable for everyone though for a number of reasons, but there are many other alternatives on the market, for example the Sony A7R IV or V with the Sony 24 mm f/1.4 GM – a set up which I love and sadly does not get enough time off my shelf due to the Leica Q3 being both smaller and lighter. The main things I would suggest is having a wide and fast lens, as well as a camera body that performs well with high ISO low light situations, including good in-body image stabilisation. Usually, I am not very fussed about the full-frame vs APS-C / other crop sensors argument, but personally, I think for this shooting exercise, a full-frame sensor would be best due to the high ISO and low light shooting conditions.

I did not use the follow pieces of kit, but it may be helpful to have within reach a circular polariser filter (CPL) to cut out as much of the reflections as possible. Although the downside to this is that you will lose around one to one-and-a-half stops of light – this means that a f/1.7 lens will have to have the ISO and shutter speed set as if it were a f/2.4 or f/2.8 to get the same exposure. Let’s take the exposure settings I used for my shot of the Milky Way: ISO 25000, 1 second, f/1.7. If I used a CPL which cut out one stop of light, I would need to either change ISO to 50000 giving a lot more noise, or shutter speed to 2 seconds increasing the chance of movement blur.

You may also find it helpful to have a mini tripod that you can lean against the arm of the seat to prop up your camera against the window, but that may also not be very helpful when you have an unstable platform to begin with due to the nature of an aeroplane flying through the air, not to mention the possibility of turbulence too.

Shooting for the stars

Those of you who have photographed out of windows will know the nightmare of reflections. There are relatively large silicone lens hoods which you can put on the end of your lens to try and shield out as much reflection as possible. But the problem with an aeroplane’s window is that the distance between the various panels making up an aeroplane’s window is usually larger than the distance between panes of glass of a building’s window on terra firma. The larger distance between the different panes of an aeroplane’s window generally make lens hoods ineffective, even if you are pressed right against the innermost pane.

I brought a dark trench coat on board with me as the weather when I departed the UK was starting to get a little chilly, also intending to use my trench coat to cover the entire window to prevent as much light from hitting any of the panes. From my experience of shooting the aurora from an aeroplane, I knew approximately the settings I might need, so it was trial and error around that ballpark area. I knew with the movement of the aeroplane I needed a relatively fast shutter speed like 1 second or so, and I knew from the aurora shot that ISO 50000 was probably too noisy for any details of the Milky Way to show, so I tried ISO 25000, 1 second, f/1.7 as my settings, which were actually the settings which I needed to pull off this shot!

Pre-setting my exposure settings and turning on the self-timer, I juggled my trench coat with my camera underneath the trench coat, fumbling at the shutter button and holding as still as I could for a few seconds, snapping a few shots at a time before reviewing. I find that I could hold the camera relatively still if I pressed it against the innermost layer of the aeroplane’s window whilst slowly breathing out. It was pretty much all trial and error as I could not use the Leica Fotos app on my phone due to not having enough hands to juggle everything – the bane of flying alone and wanting to photograph out the window! I shot a total of 83 shots, coming away with only one keeper – a dire keep rate of 1.2 per cent – but coming away with even one keeper was worth all the clumsy fumbling about, from trying to throw the coat over me whilst I was under the coat holding the camera, to slipping my hand into the sleeve to hold the camera (see the reflection of my hand in the first few shots?), to finally just throwing my coat over the camera and the window and pressing the shutter button through my coat and hoping for the best!

You may notice that amongst the 83 RAW files, some have the wing in the dark, some have the wing illuminated by red light, some have the wing lit up slightly. This is because the aeroplane has various combination of flashing lights: a red beacon light which indicates the aeroplane is in operation; white strobes on the wingtips and tail which helps in early detection of the aircraft from all directions. The shot which I chose happened to be shot when the white strobe flashed, which give the wingtip and area in front of the wingtip a slight illumination from the strobe. Getting the right combination of lights or no lights is, again, all just trial and error.

You may also have noticed that the shot also features a hit of a green light on the wingtip – this is one of the navigation lights which are always on. They help give an indication as to the aeroplane’s heading: green on the right and red on the left.

The best laid plans of mice and men

With all the planning that can be done to take into account probably flight paths, moon phases and your photographic gear, there are still factors that cannot be planned for that can scupper plans for a specific imagined shot from an aeroplane window.

Despite checking what might be the probably flight path, this can change from flight to flight – sometimes not by much, sometimes rather wildly. Flight paths can change depending on weather or even geopolitical issues. For example, before February 2022, flights from London to Seoul flew over Scandinavia and over the Russian Arctic, but with the closure of Russian airspace to most carriers, airlines re-routed their flights through central Europe and over the middle east before flying over central Asia and northern China – a flight route which, although looks straighter on a 2D flat map, is actually a bit of a detour on a globe at around 24 per cent longer than the direct routing.

Delays can also throw plans off, since the location of the Milky Way is dependent on the specific time of night. In the northern hemisphere, the night sky seemingly moves around Polaris, the north star, at around 1° every four minutes. The amount of movement will be more pronounced nearer the horizon than nearer Polaris. A delay of an hour will mean the Milky Way will have moved the Milky Way around 15° around Polaris. A three-hour delay will have shifted the Milky Way westward so much that it may not be possible to see it or photograph it from the same view point looking south-west.

Let us examine the example of BA7 again, flying over Ürümqi at around 1607 UTC on 6 September 2024. 1607 UTC (the times in the screenshots of the web version of Stellarium below are BST times, so UTC +1) places the Milky Way in the south-western sky. An hour later at 1707 UTC shifts the Milky Way a little, but should still be visible in the night sky in the south-west when looking out of the aeroplane window. Rather than the Milky Way being right next to the wingtip at 1607 UTC, it is likely to still be visible – dependent on how wide a lens is being used – slightly further away from the wingtip at 1707 UTC. If there were a delay of three hours, by the time BA7 reaches Ürümqi at around 1907 UTC, the Milky Way will have shifted from the south-west to the west, not to mention most of the colourful gas clouds would be below the horizon.

Weather is also a key factor in being able to shoot the cosmos. Despite flying at over 30,000 ft, which is usually above most cloud cover, there can be high level cloud cover which can reach up to 60,000 ft. Usually, polar regions have lower cloud ceilings than the tropical regions, so flying above western and central Europe is not likely going present cloud cover at 60,000 ft. Also related to weather is also how turbulent a flight can feel. Ideally a steady platform would give the best chance at steady shots, even at relatively fast shutter speeds of 1 second.

Depending on the type of cloud cover over ground and atmospheric conditions, light pollution and haze may also affect how clearly the night sky can be viewed from the aeroplane’s window. But it is nonetheless still worth shooting to see what you might be able to capture as a camera’s sensor can penetrate light pollution to capture the cosmos better than our eyes.

The cleanliness of the aeroplane’s window is another factor which cannot be planned for. Although shooting wide open is likely to render any dirt or marks on the various window panes negligible, a dirty window can still affect the clarity of the image captured through the window and cause localised differences across the frame.

Bringing home the stars

After over three months of meticulous planning, countless simulations, and 83 shots of trial and error during the flight, I finally managed to capture that one shot of the Milky Way from 35,000 ft that I was happy with. The joy of seeing the unedited image appear on my camera’s screen – epitomised by my instant posting of a photo of my Q3’s LCD screen – was a testament to the hard work that went into planning this project, from choosing the right flight to wrestling with reflections and holding my breath as I pressed the shutter.

While I only had a 1.2 per cent keeper rate, the result was everything I hoped for and more – an ethereal shot of the galaxy next to aeroplane’s wing and wingtip. With enough patience and a dash of luck, even the most challenging shots are within reach.

Post editing can be equally challenging, especially when editing a shot taken with a high ISO of 25000, or figuring out the best way to deal with small areas of reflections which managed to sneak through my best attempts to shield the aeroplane’s window with my trench coat. But at least this can be taken at your own pace to suite your own style of colour grading and composition. It took me around two weeks of tweaks before I was happy with a version to show off.

If you are planning a similar adventure, remember that no matter how much you plan, there will always be unplanned factors – delays, turbulence, weather – that can affect the outcome. But these unpredictable moments often make the final image feel even more magical. So, next time you are planning an overnight flight, remember that with the right planning and preparation, you can capture some rather spectacular images whilst gazing out of the aeroplane window into the vastness of the night sky.