“Winter Milky Way and Orion over the Death Valley floor.”
The spring season is upon us, but another one has already started: Milky Way season. It’s a time when the spectacular region of our galaxy, AKA the Galactic Bulge, is visible in the night sky. “I’ve been shooting Milky Way images for almost a decade, and I still get very excited at the beginning of every new season,” astrophotographer Dan Zafra tells My Modern Met. For the start of 2025, he ventured to Death Valley to capture his first images of the Milky Way core.
Zafra’s brilliant trio of images features a gradient night sky that transforms from a dark purplish-blue into a reddish-orange and yellow swirl while approaching the horizon line. On the ground, he’s captured an up-close view of giant, highly textured mud cracks in the gray desert. “One of the things I love the most about Death Valley is how the landscape changes from year to year. These mud cracks weren’t there in the last two years, and they look stunning as a foreground,” Zafra says.
Photographing the cosmos takes planning, preparation, and technical mastery to ensure you get the best shots possible. This is no different for Zafra, who tracks the sky using his Benro Polaris star tracker and tweaks his settings accordingly. “To create a more visually appealing foreground, I set my tripod very low and closed my aperture to f/5, setting up a three-minute exposure at a high ISO,” he says. “Still, I had to focus-stack two images since I was very close to the mud cracks.” The technical setup was worth it, as Zafra’s photos are spectacular from foreground to background.
During his Milky Way session, Zafra was sure to capture Orion before the set of stars disappears until after next fall. This resulted in his most stunning image of the three, with varied colors above the mountains and a swirling star pattern punctuated with red orbs, also known as hydrogen alpha (Ha) nebulae. “Sometimes, I use a Ha filter to enhance the hydrogen alpha nebulae,” Zafra explains, “but in this case, the sky was so clear that my astromodified camera and a long exposure were enough to pull out the details in those Ha regions of the winter night sky.”
Zafra teaches others how to photograph the Milky Way through in-person workshops and webinars. Visit his website, Capture the Atlas, to learn more.
Milky Way season has started. Check out astrophotographer Dan Zafra’s first shots of the new season.
“Milky Way over mud cracks at Death Valley.”
“Milky Way panorama over the Death Valley floor.”