Milky Way in a Moonlit Night

At high altitudes the night sky is transparent enough to see the Milky Way in a moonlit night. In this view the first quarter moon has illuminated the landscape but the Milky Way in the Summer Triangle is not faded away by the bright moon. The image is made from 3600-meter high Mount Gargash in Zagros Mountains of Iran, not far from the town of Kashan. The mountain has exceptional seeing and atmospheric transparency for astronomical observations and the climate and seeing at the peak are monitored as the site for Iran National Observatory project (a 3-meter class telescope to receive its first light in 2015).