THE GRAND TETONS FROM JENNY LAKE

The Tetons are an amazingly old mountain range. We’re talking billions of years old (<2.7 Ba) from the Archean. They’re made from a combination of metamorphic rocks, including schists and gneisses. This is kind of expected in old mountains ranges as geological time smooshes rocks with varying heat and pressure as the rocks evolve. 

In terms of photographic composition etc. I really like the way that the colors of the Milky Way core are complimented by the forest and mountains below. You may wonder why I have such a gorgeous, lit foreground? The moon was rising as I took the foreground of the photo! And as for the meteor - it’s 100 % real.

Equipment: Nikon Z7, Nikkor 50 mm, f/1.8 Z lens.

Settings: Seven sky images were taken using a Sky Adventurer star tracker, for 3 minutes, with an ISO640 (invariance point for the Z7 sensor) and f/2.2. Six foreground images were taken with an exposure time of 3 minutes, ISO640, f/1.8. Obviously no tracker was used for the foreground, although I swear all of us have made the mistake of leaving it on after taking sky photos!