The brightest zodiacal light I've ever witnessed shines like a spotlight over the Kelso Dunes as the winter Milky Way sets in this image taken this past Saturday evening, April 14, 2018. Kelso Dunes, part of the larger Mojave National Preserve in the desert of Southern California, is the largest field of eolian sand deposits in the Mojave Desert. The largest dune to the far right is around 650 feet tall! The intensely bright zodiacal light in the center right of this image was amazing to see in person. It looks like some kind of man-made searchlight, but it is actually sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust in the zodiacal cloud along the ecliptic path (the line in the night sky that the planets roughly travel in the solar system disk). Because of angular momentum, when the loosely collected dust cloud that was our early solar system started to spin it eventually flattened into the disk or plane that exists now. Above the dune landscape and being perceptively pierced by the zodiacal light is the setting winter Milky Way. This part of our home galaxy contains the very recognizable Orion constellation, as well as the Pleiades star cluster, California Nebula, Auriga nebulae, and Heart and Soul nebulae. Lesser viewed in the northern skies are the Seagull Nebula in the left portion of this image, and even further left are the faint and dispersed red clouds of the Gum Nebula. Kelso Dunes Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelso_Dunes Zodiacal light Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light Planetary disk info: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/57-our-solar-system/planets-and-dwarf-planets/orbits/242-why-do-all-the-planets-orbit-in-the-same-plane-intermediate Technical Info: Date: 4/14/2018 ~67 frame panorama 13 sec @6400 ISO Camera: Canon 6D Hutech UV/IR Mod Lens: Zeiss f1.4 Milvus 35mm at f2.2 Reveal Focus Filter by David Lane Processing: Photoshop CC, MS Image Composite Editor