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The Milky Way appears to point right at a Juniper tree in this skywatching image from Sedona, Arizona.
Kelli Klymenko, a photographer in Sedona, took the image from Cathedral Rock Trail in Arizona. It's a familiar shot for Klymenko.
"I photographed this particular juniper a few years ago and wanted to revisit this shot under our brilliant dark skies," she wrote in an email to Space.com. [See more amazing Milky Way photos by stargazers]
Earth's host galaxy, the Milky Way, is a barred spiral galaxy seen as a band of light in the night sky. It stretches between 100,000 and 120,000 light-years in diameter. It is estimated that the galaxy has approximately 400 billion stars. At the center of the galaxy lies a gigantic black hole billions of times the size of the sun.
Klymenko says she prefers to capture a moment as she experiences it, and doesn't do too much processing afterwards. For this shot, she light-painted the tree with her phone and worked with the orange from her glowing headlamp.
Dust off your spiral arms and fatten up your bulge it's time to tap into your inner galaxy to test your smarts about the Milky Way. Our home in space is a strange and wondrous place that scientists are still trying to figure out. See what you know!
Milky Way Quiz: Test Your Galaxy Smarts
"The entire experimentation process is a lot of fun out in the field, especially if you don't take yourself too seriously," she added. "That's the best part." She used a Canon 5D Mark III camera; a 14mm Rokinon manual lens; 20 seconds; ISO 8000.
Editor's note: If you have an amazing skywatching photo you'd like to share it with Space.com and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.
Nina Sen is a frequent contributor to Live Science’s Life’s Little Mysteries series: an exploration and explanation of our world’s phenomena, both natural and man-made. She also writes astronomy photo stories for Live Science's sister site Space.com.
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