The Milkyway, from the American Southwest.
Travelled to Kanab, Utah to (among other things) try my hand at photographing the Milkyway.
On the first night in town, we headed out to a star-party on the outskirts of town. While there was still some cultural light in the area (a nearby house off to the left of the photo), we were still able to capture 60 second exposures without washing out the image. In this one, you can see the Milkyway band reaching up vertically from the horizon, with the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) just right of center.
I used my Canon 5D Mii full frame camera at 1600 ISO, sitting on a Manfrotto tripod with my Canon 16-35mm L f/2.8 Series II wide angle zoom at 16mm. This exposure was 59 seconds, and we did not use the Astrotracker this evening.
I think the amazing desert plateaus add much to the image, and I felt it was worth the tradeoff of light pollution to try staying in town for a short imaging session.
Later on I headed south of town about 8 miles to see how much more I could get...
