Night Sky Reflected
Image Credit & Copyright:
Egon Filter
What's that in the mirror?
In the featured image of the dark
southern sky, the three
brightest galaxies of the night are all relatively easy to identify.
Starting from the left, these are the
Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the
Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC),
and part of the central band of our
Milky Way Galaxy.
All three are also seen reflected in a shallow pool of water.
But what is seen in the mirror being positioned by the
playful astrophotographer?
Dust clouds near the
center of our Milky Way -- and the planet
Jupiter.
The composite was
carefully planned and composed from images captured from the same camera in the same location and during the same night in mid-2019 in
Mostardas, south
Brazil.
The picture won first place in the Connecting to the Dark division of the
International Dark-Sky Association's
Capture the Dark contest for 2021.