I’m always impressesd by the milky way pictures like this one since we don’t actually see with the naked eye what the pictures show.
You can in the deep boonies. Tonapah, Nevada, for instance, has some of the clearest high altitude skies. A few miles out of town late at a no-moon night it does look like the picture (without assist or binoculars or telescope). It is really amazing.
For the most part you can see this out in the country away from all the lights. I remember after the 1994 Northridge earthquake when all the lights went out in Los Angeles. The sky lit up with the stars as I had seen them way out in the desert or back in Minnesota north of the Minneapolis.
BTW those are alien spacecraft crossing the sky.