I would think the light pollution (even in Valencia) would make it rather difficult for this. I can only recall being in a few places that had absolutely no light pollution that allowed to me see the Milky Way in all of its glory...and every single one of those locations were in Afghanistan.
Found a light pollution map that might help out.
If you look at the US and Europe you will see that very few people are ever going to have a chance to see the Milky Way:
Dumaguete Info Search
Best Posts in Thread: Stargazing
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Cool maps indeed! But it's really not that bad here. The biggest issues for me are the unshielded street lights and the outdoor lighting people seem to be in love with here.
This is down the street from my house! But I can still see the Beehive Cluster!
And, from the comfort of my home:-
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There are 2 advantages to observing here:
1. The Milky Way and Ecliptic are much higher in the sky than in mid-Northern latitudes. Less atmospheric distortion to look thru.
2. Even during the Summer, you have at least 9 hours of total darkness.
Your eyes need to be dark adapted! You cannot go outside after staring at a laptop screen and expect to see lots of stars. You need to take a couple of beers outside, close your eyes until you've consumed the beers (approx 20min), then look up. If your consumption rate is faster like mine, bring 3 or 4 beers.
I took the following image after 4 beers. This is the Northern Milky Way above my house at 2am.
Altair is at the Zenith. The camera's image sensor is capturing stars down to +8.5 magnitude. Of course you can't see this with the naked eye. But a pair of 7x50 binoculars will show every star in this image!
Very cool!-
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From my terrace:
It's really not bad here once your eyes are dark-adapted.
Of course this is a long exposure, but there's no problem seeing star clusters and nebula thru binoculars or a scope. The sky is usually not this transparent because of the humid air, but the seeing is very steady. You can get great high magnification views of the Moon, Sun and planets.
Again, from my terrace:
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Looks like you need to be at least 30km away from Dumaguete and 10km away from any of the smaller towns to be able to escape the light pollution.
Visibility is worsened by all the pollution coming out of tailpipes. I also believe I read somewhere that LED lights amplify the problem as they emit light of all colors and cannot be filtered out by telescopes.-
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I've observed the Moon and planets from NYC. I held star parties in Metro Manila and showed people the rings of Saturn, the moons and cloud bands of Jupiter and the polar ice cap on Mars.
As far as my camera voodoo goes, every star in the images that I post can be seen with a pair of 7x50 binoculars. Including the Andromeda Galaxy, rising above the light dome of Dumaguete in this image:
The tricky part is that you have to look up.-
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