Clear skies over Jadwin, Missouri beckoned avid night sky photographer Victor Rogus to shoot this spectacular black-and-white photo of the Milky Way.
"While some say, 'everything looks worse in black and white,' I cannot disagree more. I just love using my digital camera in its monochromatic mode on sky subjects," Rogus toldSPACE.com in an email.
"There are no 'false color' issues seen here, just the straightforward documentation of the stellar light," Rogus added. "Honest and clean, a collection of grey tones with no distraction of color."
Our host galaxy, the Milky Way, is a barred spiral galaxy made of gas, dust and approximately 400 billion stars. From Earth it appears as a band of light in the night sky.
Rogus took this image in the early morning hours of July 13 using a Cannon 60Da astronomy camera fitted with a Zeiss 18mm f3.5 lens. The ISO setting was 640 and the exposure time was 188 seconds. A Losmandy G-8 GEM was used as a camera tracker.
Editor's note: If you have an amazing night sky photo you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.
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