NIGHT SKY

If you hold your hand palm up at arm's length under the night sky, the space taken up by your pinky nail contains one million galaxies.

One million.

And each of those galaxies contain an average of 100 million stars. Some will have a trillion stars.
 

Unfortunately, even the simple grandeur of a starry sky is lost to most of us, washed out in the light domes that surround our cities. 

When I started taking photos of the night sky years ago, I hoped they would be engaging images: star trails, the Milky Way, star scapes, etc. Only after I started deep space astrophotography and possessed basic star knowledge did I realize how much I value our lost connection to the night sky. It gives me perspective, reminds me to be humble, and makes it refreshingly clear that our entire planet—all it's life, beauty, and faults—are but a miniscule piece of an extraordinarily large universe.

Additionally, the constellations bring comforting familiarity to a frequent traveler.