Our Milky Way captured over Mount Fuji!

At one glance, one may think that this image is photoshopped or it’s a composite because it’s simply impossible to see Milky Way galaxy at dusk. But what you’re really seeing here is a single exposure shot of a rare phenomenon, known as zodiacal light (a.k.a. “false dusk”), that I have captured during my recent trip to Mount Bromo in the Southern Hemisphere. Zodiacal light is best seen during spring and autumn, and I chose to visit Mt Bromo a few days after [the Southern Hemisphere's autumnal equinox] as I hoped to capture the zodiacal light along with the 3 planets, 3 volcanoes and a Milky Way galaxy.

This image was captured when the sun was around 15 degrees below the horizon and the sky was reaching its astronomical darkness state.

Zodiacal light is actually sunlight reflecting off dust grains that circle the sun in the inner solar system. These grains are thought to be left over from the process that created our Earth and the other planets of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

A Hubble Space Telescope image shows unprecedented detail of the Antennae galaxies, an intense star-forming region created when two galaxies began to collide some 200 million to 300 million years ago. The bright, blue-white areas show newly formed stars surrounded by clouds of hydrogen, which are colored pink. A similar collision is expected between our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the nearby Andromeda galaxy in several billion years.

Light pollution in urban skies makes it almost impossible for any aspiring astrophotographers to pursue their craft here in Singapore. Since I started deep sky astrophotography in August 2013, I have been asking myself if it’s really impossible to capture the Milky Way galaxy in Singapore and so, I’ve decided to make my first attempt in February 2014, with the help of my web-based astronomy tool, after the monsoon season was over and voila! I could see it! All hope was not lost after all.

And if a single-exposure image is not convincing enough, I have also filmed a time-lapse video (before I took the lonely tree shot,) showing both the Milky Way and planet Venus rising over the light-polluted skies of Singapore, using just a normal DSLR camera and lens.