The milky way galaxy, as seen behind tufa towers of the 1 million year old Mono Lake.

Kicking off milky way season 2025, Miguel D and I made our annual road trip to the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains via Sonora Pass. We were the only ones here, perhaps due to temps dropping to 23°F. Brrr.

This is a composite, utilizing a stack of 300+ sky images, including lights, darks, flats, and bias frames, blended using Sequator, then stars reduced with StarXTerminator. The foreground frames are a stack of 20+, 30 second exposures at ISO 16,000, median blended to reduce noise.

Lens is the A-120mm f/4 macro on the 645Z to achieve a much more magnified view of the sky than my usual.

Thanks for looking.