Starry Winter Landscape

Fresh snow fall has covered Zagros Mountains of Iran under a starry winter night. Light from the setting moon has illuminated the top of these mountains near Natanz in central Iran. The sky gets darker as the moon sets revealing the beauty of the winter Milky Way. Sirius, the brightest star in the Earth night sky, stands right above the mountains. Its a neighboring star to our sun “only” 8 light years away, still far enough that it takes over a hundred thousand years to reach it by today fastest spacecrafts! Continue upward to find constellation of Orion and then Taurus and Pleiades star cluster at the upper right. © Babak Tafreshi