Staring into our galaxy gives perspective.

I take these photos in the desert near Mizpe Ramon, the darkest place in my country 30 km from most sources of light so the sky is full of stars and the Milky Way is visible to the eye in the summer.

Such shots require certain gear and settings, I use:

• Canon 2000D

• 18-55mm lens open at its widest

• iOptron sky tracker

• A steady and heavy tripod

• A camera controller

I take several long exposure shots (5-20minutes each) with the tracker and then stack them up later to get rid of noise and enhance the details.

Check out the photos below to see the setup I use.

Everything is mounted on a stable tripod and I use a camera controller so that I don't shake the camera - stability is key.

Aligning the tracker with Polaris:

The gear in action:

Btw, here's how milky way shots from the winter look like:

And here's a video to show how much the rotation of the earth is critical in long exposures shots: