Touching the Center of the Universe

A photo composite of multiple exposures. From the photographer: “Traditional astrophysics teaches us the Universe originated with the “Big Bang” when from a point of almost no size expanded space and time through the matter. Of course, questions like “what was before”, “where all the matter came from” or similar are sort of out of researchers’ possibilities since all we can study is defined by electromagnetic radiation which appeared about 400k years after the Big Bang occurred. All before are just matters of our hypotheses. Anyway, the interesting fact of it is the Universe started to expand in all directions such as two points on the surface of expanding inflatable balloon. Since traditional physics expects all to come from one small point and all the matter is in it, there is no center to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. Like me in this shot, symbolically positioned in the center, and trying to touch the center of the Universe on the ESO Paranal Observatory platform. The bright point by my hand is planet Jupiter and just above it is a view to one truly undeniable center–the one of our Milky Way Galaxy. Click the second photo to see a panoramic view of the Milky way above the observatory.”

Technical details: Canon 6D IR modified, Samyang 25mm, f 2.2, ISO 10000, 37 single 15s exposures stitched to final panorama