Summer Milky Way with Great Rift and Meteor
Sunday, September 13th, 2026 at 4:12:09 AM · 2026/Astrophotography
This stunning wide-field astrophotograph captures the summer Milky Way in extraordinary detail, with the Great Rift — a dark lane of interstellar dust — cutting dramatically from corner to corner across the galactic plane. A bright meteor has been composited back into the final image from a single capture frame, having been removed during sigma-rejection stacking of 294 × 20-second tracked exposures at ISO 800, totaling 98 minutes of integration time. The image was captured with a Canon EOS R6 Mark II paired with the RF 15-35mm f/2.8 L IS USM lens at 15mm f/3.5, yielding an impressively wide and deep view of the galactic core region. Rich warm golden and amber tones of dense star fields contrast beautifully against the dark dust lanes and the deep black of the surrounding sky, with hints of reddish nebulosity visible along the galactic band. The technical execution — long integration, sigma-clipped stacking, and careful meteor compositing — reflects a high level of astrophotography skill.
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