Milky Way Glows in Beautiful Black-and-White Photo

Milky Way Black and White
Victor Rogus took this black and white image of the Milky Way on July 13, 2013 from Jadwin, Missouri. (Image credit: Victor Rogus)

Clear skies over Jadwin, Missouri beckoned avid night sky photographer Victor Rogus to shoot this spectacular black-and-white photo of the Milky Way.

"While some say, 'everything looks worse in black and white,' I cannot disagree more. I just love using my digital camera in its monochromatic mode on sky subjects," Rogus toldSPACE.com in an email.

"There are no 'false color' issues seen here, just the straightforward documentation of the stellar light," Rogus added. "Honest and clean, a collection of grey tones with no distraction of color."

Our host galaxy, the Milky Way, is a barred spiral galaxy made of gas, dust and approximately 400 billion stars. From Earth it appears as a band of light in the night sky.

Rogus took this image in the early morning hours of July 13 using a Cannon 60Da astronomy camera fitted with a Zeiss 18mm f3.5 lens. The ISO setting was 640 and the exposure time was 188 seconds. A Losmandy G-8 GEM was used as a camera tracker.  

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Contributing Writer and Producer

Nina Sen is a freelance writer and producer who covered night sky photography and astronomy for Space.com. She began writing and producing content for Space.com in 2011 with a focus on story and image production, as well as amazing space photos captured by NASA telescopes and other missions. Her work also includes coverage of amazing images by astrophotographers that showcase the night sky's beauty.