Astrophoto: Milky Way Over the Bungle Bungles by Mike Salway

By Nancy Atkinson - July 31, 2012 at 3:46 PM UTC | Milky Way
milky-way-over-bungle-bungles.jpg

Photographer Mike Salway recently took a trip to the western Australia Kimberly Region of the Outback, and has posted some amazing night sky images of his adventures. This picture -- and the name of the geologic features -- especially caught my eye. The Bungle Bungles of Purnululu National Park are an incredible sight in themselves, huge beehive-shaped sandstone formations. But Mike was able to take a panoramic view of the Milky Way arching over the formations, a symmetrical halo of light in the full sky.

"You know the skies are dark when you can see the Milky Way overhead, even when there's a more than half-moon shining brightly high in the west sky," Mike wrote on his website. "And that's what it was like at the Bungle Bungles."

This image is an 8 frame panorama, taken on the Piccaninny Creek bed with his Canon 5D Mk II and Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens.

See more images

from Mike's trip

, and

all his other work, too

, plus check out his

IceInSpace website,

a collection of amateur astronomer images of the Solar System.

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you're giving us permission to post them). Please explain what's in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com