@konah619: Julien Looten didn’t take this photo by chance. The French photographer calculated the exact moment so that a stone staircase in Chile’s Atacama Desert would appear against the dark band of the Milky Way, almost vertical above the horizon. The result looks like a path straight to the stars, and NASA chose it as its Astronomy Picture of the Day on October 13, 2026. But the most fascinating part is what’s happening around the staircase. According to NASA’s explanation, three lights of different origins come together in that same scene: light from the stars in our galaxy, sunlight scattered by dust in the Solar System (the band of zodiacal light in the upper left), and the green and red glow emitted by Earth’s own atmosphere just above the horizon. Spica also appears among the stars. When you look at the photo again, notice how many different lights can fit into a single sky.

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Tuesday 20 October 2026 00:25:39 GMT