Most people alive today have never properly seen the Milky Way, which would astonish every generation before ours. The river of stars did not go anywhere; we just built lights under it and stopped looking up.
These photographs were taken where the dark still works — deserts, high ridges, coastlines past the last streetlamp. Exposures long enough to collect ancient light, foregrounds kept in so the sky has a witness.
As a wallpaper, a good starfield does something odd: it makes a six-inch screen feel less like a wall and more like a window. Cheaper than a telescope, and it fits in your pocket.
