Mark Appleton, Milky Way Curves (May theme: The night sky)

Taken in Lancelin, Western Australia. Lancelin is a small town about an hours drive north of Perth and they have some fantastic sand dunes that are great to give some foreground interest to an otherwise normal milky way shot. I was going to call it a night as it was getting windy and the sand was blowing against my face, but as I ventured over this particular sand dune, I noticed the contour of the dune against the milky way and the the fact that there were two small lights flashing in the far distance behind me to the right of the image. The ambience of the faint light was just enough to illuminate the right side of the dune on a moonless and very dark night. This image was a stitch of 6 images across two rows, each image captured at 14mm at 20 seconds, f2.8, ISO 6400.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.