Milky Way

After being up at 7am for work and being on the go all day, I then started a night shift at 10.30pm, covering for a colleague.  After a busy three hours it went quiet, so I drove to Llangybi which is on the road between The Roman Village of Caerleon and the village of Usk. There's a barn in a field that is an ideal foreground; but I was alarmed to see it was being restored and covered in scaffold!


The 'Star Walk' mobile phone-app indicated The Milky Way was behind the barn in the direction of Newport City. You can see the blip photo has picked up light pollution from it despite the field being pitch black.


The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name "milky" is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky whose individual stars cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. It measure some 120,000–180,000 light-years in diameter, it is home to planet Earth, the birthplace of humanity. Our Solar System resides roughly 27,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust particles called the Orion Arm.

It has between100 and 400 billion stars; but when you look up into the night sky, the most you can see from any one point on the globe is about 2,500. most recent estimates place the age of the Universe at about 13.7 billion years. Our Milky Way has been around for about 13.6 billion of those years, give or take another 800 million.

I eventually got to bed about 9.30am; it was a long day, but I was on another call about 2pm!  It'll be nice to spend tonight in bed before working another night shift Monday. I love working them as the roads are clear and I get to take some night pictures whist getting paid!