Posted on 07/07/2016 7:14:08 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: The Milky Way is massively bright on this cold, clear, altiplano night. At 4,500 meters its reflection in a river, a volcanic peak on the distant horizon, is captured in this stitched panorama under naturally dark skies of the northern Chilean highlands near San Pedro de Atacama. Along the Solar System's ecliptic plane, the band of Zodiacal light also stands out, extending above the Milky Way toward the upper left. In the scene from late April, brilliant Mars, Saturn, and Antares form a bright celestial triangle where ecliptic meets the center of the Milky Way. Left of the triangle, the large purple-red emission nebula Sharpless 2-27, more than twenty Moon diameters wide is centered around star Zeta Ophiuchi.
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[Credit and Copyright: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)]
Whoops, there is no Big One today.
Maybe it is simply a distortion of the photo image, but I have never before noticed the sine wave of the galactic span.
One time, quite a few years ago now, Mrs. Chajin and I were on a patch of Eleuthera that had no light pollution, on new moon, and the sky view was indescribable.
It reminds me of Emerson's famous line from Nature, "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!"
I just realized with this pic that the axis of our solar system must be tilted in comparison with the axis of our galaxy...huh never even thought about it before.
I wondered why I keep rolling down to the other end of the house...
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