On a tranquil Hawaii vacation, astrophotographer Mike Beck took a chance road trip — where he captured this image of the glimmering orange night sky.
"Lucky enough to be in Hawaii where I rented a car and drove up to the Ellison Onizuka Astronomy Center [June 28] at Mauna Kea and I was richly rewarded," Beck wrote in an email to Space.com.
The Milky Way, the galaxy containing our own solar system , is a barred spiral galaxy with roughly 400 billion stars. The stars, along with gas and dust, appear as a band of light in the sky when seen from Earth. The galaxy stretches between 100,000 to 120,000 light-years in diameter.
The Onizuka astronomy center is located atop the dormant volcano Mauna Kea, on Hawaii island.
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