A Dark Summer Night of Grand Canyon

From the photographer: “This is a panoramic look at Grand Canyon, from North Rim to the south, showing the layered rocks of the canyon and the opposite rim about 20 km away. Shining above the canyon and plateau is the Milky Way with Saturn nestled in the central bulge and Jupiter shining low over the canyon walls due southwest.”

The generally reddish layers of rock in view were deposited from 544 to 254 million years ago, about the time it took our Solar System to orbit around the Milky Way. After about another orbit, the layers were cut by Colorado River and and its tributaries, mostly in the last 18
million years.