Monday 13 October 2008

Our Milky Way Like You've Never Seen It Before


It looks like a lunar landscape but this remarkable photograph actually shows our Milky Way and the planet Jupiter in all their glory - viewed from a cave in America's Utah desert.

The spiral galaxy, which cannot be seen with the naked eye, was captured by photographer Wally Pacholka using a 35mm camera and 50mm lens on a tripod with a 30-second exposure - long enough to collect the light but not to see the stars moving.

2 comment(s):

Anonymous said...

is there a higher Res of this picture? Being from Utah I can honestly say the skies in the desert here are beautiful beyond belief!

Anonymous said...

just to correct one thing - the milky way can be seen with the naked eye. you just need to be somewhere without light pollution, the utah desert is a good choice. I recently completed a round the world trip and once you're away from the "developed" world the night sky is a humbling experience. lie on the floor for 10 minutes and all the time more detail is revealed as your eyes and mind adjust.... really staggering. having lived in cities all my life i had no idea what i was missing. just to be clear - getting out of the town and "seeing the stars" is not the same. get 50 to 100 miles from ANY sources of night light and you'll be blown away...