Galaxy of Dreams

Majestic as it is mysterious, the Milky Way can easily illuminate the night sky in a dazzling flourish with just the right camera setting. Containing an estimated 100–400 billion stars, our barred spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, intertwines with interstellar dust to create a brilliantly complex bridge of light sprinkled across the sky. At the end of this bridge on the left lies Gemini North, the northern twin of the International Gemini Observatory, supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab. Standing near the summit of Maunakea in Hawai‘i, the telescope’s location places it far away from light pollution and right among the stars for proper astronomical study. At the center, below the cloud deck forming at the bottom of the image, are the trapped city lights of Hilo. On the right, the faint glow of lava from the Kīlauea volcano lights up a portion of the sky beyond the actual summit of Maunakea in an orangish glow underneath an otherwise bluish galaxy.