This weekend, we went camping in one of the most light-pollution-free deserts in Saudi Arabia—Bajdah. There, I witnessed the Milky Way Galaxy arching majestically across the night sky. It was an awe-inspiring sight.

To capture it, I set up my Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i star tracker and aligned it to the North Celestial Pole. On the tracker, I mounted my Sony A7 III with the Sony 24mm f/1.4 G Master lens.

The sky portion of the image is a two-row panorama, with 7 tracked images per row. Each exposure was 120 seconds long at f/1.4 and ISO 200 to maximize detail and minimize noise.

The foreground is a blue hour blend. I captured it just before sunrise, which introduced a challenge: the lighting conditions were changing rapidly, and even in manual mode, each frame came out slightly different in brightness and color. I also noticed an unusual glow near the car—I'm not sure if it's airglow or residual sunlight, but I think it adds a nice touch to the image.

Stitching the sky in Photoshop was already a challenge due to the night sky moving during long-exposure tracked shots. But stitching the foreground was even harder, as I had to balance uneven lighting and color across the frames. After hours of painstaking work, I was able to merge both sky and foreground into a seamless final image.

This was a three-day journey—one day to prepare and shoot, and two full days of editing. It may not be perfect for everyone, but to me, it’s my best work so far. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!