Gideon Captures the Milky Way at Emu Ridge

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Gideon Captures the Milky Way at Emu Ridge

Gideon, from Israel, is Wwoofing with us at the moment and has been a great help. He has quite a talent behind the camera. Thanks for sharing these awesome nights shots of Emu Ridge! Certainly a different perspective of our place. We love them! If you would like to see the Facebook album of his night time shots, please click here.

The night sky is disappearing before our eyes. The thousands of stars once visible to the naked eye are now obscured by the glare of industrial light and the haze of pollution, the Milky Way is now rarely seen. The Milky Way used to be a part of everyone’s life experience. We are amazed when visitors start taking pics of our night skies in awe of our beautiful stars and say it is something that they have never seen before!

Wwoofers like Gideon have always been a big part of our lives here at Emu Ridge.  We have met so many wonderful travellers through our doors, friendships that will last forever 🙂

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Photo courtesy of Gideon Shinaar

What is the Milky Way?

The spiral galaxy that contains our solar system. Made up of an estimated two hundred billion stars or more, it is seen from Earth as an irregular band of hazy light across the night sky. The solar system is located in one of the revolving spiral arms, about 50 light-years north of the galactic plane and some 27,700 light-years from the galaxy’s center, which lies in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It takes approximately 250 million years for the solar system to orbit the galactic center, which is believed to contain a massive black hole. The Milky Way measures about 100,000 light-years in diameter and is the second largest galaxy, after the Andromeda Galaxy, in the cluster known as the Local Group. See also spiral galaxy.