Our Home, The Milky Way
A Photo Essay
This is the story about the day I saw our home, The Milky Way.
It is just one of billions of galaxies, but the Milky Way is our galaxy that contains our Solar System, our home in the universe.
The Milky Way gets its name from a Greek myth about the goddess Hera who sprayed milk across the sky. It is known as Akash Ganga in Hindi.
The Milky Way has approximately 400 billions stars and contains a supermassive black hole at its core, surrounded by a central bulge of old, yellow stars. Sounds fascinating, doesn’t it?
It has been my dream to sleep under the stars at least once in my lifetime. City life doesn’t make this easy and then there are practical factors like safety, accessibility etc. to make this possible. One needs to go to remote areas with negligible air pollution and no light pollution to witness this phenomenon.
If we have to see the milky way with naked eyes, we have to be in a very dark area, with clear skies, at a particular place on the hemisphere, at a particular time and have lots of luck on our side.
Also seeing so many brilliant stars in the night sky is magically overwhelming. It is so unfortunate that we have such a beautiful world but we cannot witness it because of man made light and smoke pollution.
I landed on this trip at the very last minute because of a goof up from one irresponsible travel company. As I sulked and googled in the morning about the milky way on google I found a small tour leaving the same day. When I called them to enquire they were already in my pickup location but I was still in my night dress! I requested them to wait for a while and pick me from another location and they agreed. I simply stuffed all my things, packed my camera and shoes in the first bag I could find and rushed. After a series of fastest mode of transfers from a rickshaw, metro and skywalks I finally made it to the bus! A good camera with a tripod is a must to capture long exposure shots. I forgot to carry the latter as my trip was a last minute plan granted by the universe, so these pictures were taken on a camera mounted steady on a camping table against a stack of cards!
This image and the previous one was taken on a canon 5D mark lll (ISO 1600 24mm F4.0 30'’) in a remote village in Maharashtra, India. The galaxy is opened up slightly in Adobe Lightroom to see the stars clearly and I was stunned at the marvel of the universe when I first saw the image. To the naked eye it was a lot darker but still clearly visible. These are single images and not stacked.
I had made this painting of the Milky Way in March 2017 and when I saw the final image that I took on 16th March 2024, I couldn't believe how eerily similar it looked to my painting. It is a remarkable manifestation come true on a night I will remember forever. The Universe truly works in mysterious ways.
From almost giving up to finally discovering the first rise of the milky way at 4.30 am on a cold dark night of anticipation was simply magical.
There is nothing more beautiful than nature and seeing the starry milky way is just one way of realising how truly magnificent our world is.
I also have to thank my travel buddies for being the best assistants in my experiment with the shutter and torch and I am so glad I did not wait for anyone to take me there and chose to put a plan of action to my dreams myself. It was an epic night chasing the stars.
Have you experienced your manifestations come true? Let me know in the comments.
Love,
Lubna
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You may like to read my latest book, ‘Unsaid’:
