The Milky Way like you've never seen it

I'll never forget the first time I really saw the Milky Way Galaxy. It was in August 2004. My wife and I were camping with her parents at Horse Meadow Campground in the Sierra Nevada mountains. We'd been city slickers for the better part of 8 years, and had long forgotten the splendor of the night sky.

But late that summer night, high in the mountains, all of that changed. I stepped out of my tent and was blown away at the sight of the Milky Way Galaxy. You could almost reach out and touch it, it looked so close.

With our rural location and night sky ordinances, Yucca Valley is pretty dark as far as towns go, but sometimes I wonder what it would be like to see a totally dark sky with no light pollution at all. I imagine what Abraham must have seen, when God told him to look up, and promised him an offspring that would outnumber the stars in the heavens (Gen. 15:5). With no city lights to compete, it must have been pitch-black with tens of thousands of brilliant stars shimmering down.

Most of us may not have the luxury of totally dark skies in the 21st century, but this amazing time-lapse video captures the majesty of the Milky Way, and the power of its Creator.


Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.