If you're an avid photographer or you're just curious about the night sky, then August is the month to step outside and look up.

At this time of year, the heart of the Milky Way lies directly above your head between 8:00pm and 9:00pm.

"This is when we have the most beautiful skies," says amateur astronomer and astrophotographer Noeleen Lowndes.

The zodiac constellations of Sagittarius, Scorpius and Ophiuchus are jam-packed with stars and filled with stunning gas and dust clouds called nebulae.

And, at the moment, both Jupiter and Saturn are also in the centre of the galaxy, in the constellation of Sagittarius.

So even if you don't have a good view of the Milky Way from your backyard, you can still find the heart of the galaxy.

Stellarium illustration showing Milky Way and planets this month

So let's take a closer look at some of the astrophotography favourites above you right now, with some tips for everyone from beginners to advanced photographers.

"You don't need a lot of fancy equipment to enjoy the night sky," says Ms Lowndes who spent many nights studying the sky as a young mum before she picked up her first telescope 35 years ago.

"A pair of binoculars or even a small telescope can give you beautiful views of the Moon and the planets."

But if you want to see the colours of deep sky objects such as nebulae you will need camera.

"You can't really see those colours with your eyes, only the camera can pick them up," says Ms Lowndes, who is the past-president of the Southern Astronomical Society in Queensland.

"That's why I like using digital SLRs because I get that immediate wow straight away from my pictures."

Jupiter and Saturn

Jupiter and Saturn, like all planets and the Moon, move across the sky along a line that passes through all the zodiac constellations called the ecliptic.

While the two bright planets appear as a pair in the sky, they are millions of kilometres apart and moving at different rates.

Jupiter takes about a year to move through a constellation, while Saturn takes around two and a half years to do the same.

How the night sky works

Finding Jupiter or the Southern Cross is easy if you know where to look — and that's easy too once you know how the movement of the Earth affects our view of the sky.

Both planets were at their brightest in mid-July when they were directly opposite the Sun and closest to Earth, but they are still very prominent in the sky.

"At any time for the next three or four months they'll be travelling all night through the sky," Ms Lowndes says.

The two planets are currently bright enough that you can make out Jupiter's moons in binoculars, says Dylan O'Donnell, an astronomer and astrophotographer based in Byron Bay.

Ms Lowndes took the photos of Jupiter and Saturn (above) last week from her observatory at Leyburn near Toowoomba, using a digital SLR camera attached to a 254 mm (10-inch) telescope.

"To take pictures of planets you need a large-aperture telescope to capture detail," she says.

Two views of Saturn

"It's not very often you get to see the surface gases [on Saturn] so uniform and the Cassini division is so clear. It was a very stable and clear night."

Spotting the centre of the galaxy

Moving higher in the sky you'll come to the richest part of the Milky Way (although this is much harder to see with the naked eye in areas with light pollution).

If you live in an urban area and you want to catch this part of the sky from your backyard Ms Lowndes suggests looking up when there is no moon (the new moon is August 18) and after 9:00pm when there are less lights.

Four favourites of photographers in the August sky are: the Lagoon Nebula and the Triffid Nebula in Sagittarius, the Eagle Nebula in Serpens; and the Rho Ophiuchi complex on the border of Ophiuchus and Scorpius.

The images of these nebulae will vary depending upon the type of equipment and photo processing used.

Ms Lowndes uses a digital SLR camera with a variety of lenses or attached to a lower-powered 80mm telescope to capture wide field views of stars and deep-sky objects.

"That's my camera that I use for all my nature shots, so it's the real colour of the sky that comes down," Ms Lowndes says.

Mr O'Donnell on the other hand often likes to zoom into nebula so he often uses higher-end telescopes and filters that bring out more of the colours.

Both photographers take multiple images with long exposure times and stack them together in software to create a single photo.

Lagoon and Triffid Nebulae

Lagoon Nebula (top) and Trifid Nebula (bottom) widefield taken with DSLR camera and 80 mm telescope