Fire, City, and the Milky Way

The Milky Way appears over the lights of suburban Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. A major fire accident in a factory made the large smog over the valley (Click on the second photo to see a close-up view of the fire source). While the horizon is dominated by the city lights, the transparent sky of high altitude Alps, reduces the amount of light pollution scattered across the sky, resulting in fairly dark starry skies not far from the urban areas.