Heaven on Earth
Credit & Copyright:
Richard Payne (Arizona Astrophotography)
If sometimes it appears that the entire
Milky Way Galaxy
is raining down on your head, do not despair.
It happens twice a day.
As the Sun rises in the East,
wonders of the night sky
become less bright than the
sunlight scattered by our own
Earth's atmosphere, and so fade from view.
They will only rotate
back into view when the Earth again eclipses our bright Sun at dusk.
This battle between heaven and Earth was
captured dramatically in a digitally enhanced double-exposure over the
Kofa
Mountains in
Arizona,
USA in 2003 May.
Dark dust,
millions of stars, and bright
glowing red gas highlight the
plane of our
Milky Way Galaxy,
which lies on average thousands of
light years behind
Earth's mountains.