It was our last night on Kilimanjaro. Despite being completely exhausted from 18 hours of ascent and descent, I awakened early in the morning to photograph what is known to be one of the darkest skies on earth. I wandered around the moorlands until I had a good view of Kibo, the highest volcanic cone of Kilimanjaro, delightfully rewarded by the line of lights running up the ridge from climbers who were halfway on their way to the summit - which I was one myself less than 24 hours ago.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much photographic success. The Milky Way had set, and I couldn't focus the lens properly because my fingers were freezing. This is the photo I ended up with. By my calculations using Stellarium (and triangulating from the cropped parts of the photo) the orange elliptical spot on the top left is actually the Andromeda Galaxy.
Can you fathom that? This is a picture of a million year old volcano, and those pixels of Andromeda are from 2.5 million year old photons from an entirely different galaxy*. If that doesn't put us in our place, what else will?
*Alright, some of those pixels are sensor noise.