The Galactic whale over the South Pacific
The South Pacific is famous for lot of spots, where you can watch the migrating whales. One of the spot is, of course, Rarotonga of the Cook Islands. I saw several whales slowly and gracefully swimming over the lagoon from Rarotonga Backpackers, but the biggest whale was somewhere else – in the sky. That’s true. Well, imaginarelly, of course. In the image, captured late on 21st August 2014, there is the Milky Way above the Rarotonga lagoon, very close to the Backpackers, as it slowly sets over the ocean. Now, if you look at the image closely, you maybe see the shape of the whale, with its head in the center of the Milky Way, and its tail right as the Milky way continues behind the bush. No? Really? If not, this image may help you a lot.
Another two galaxies are left (Magellanic clouds) and one is right (Andromeda gallaxy). The green and red hue is caused by atmospheric airglow. For this panorama was used Canon 6D, Samyang 24 mm, f2, ISO 6400, 18×15 s panorama, tripod. For the representation of the whale there was used graphic made by Chris huh of the Wikipedia.
