The Milky Way is one of my favorite subjects to capture in every places we travel. First off, make sure that the destination is mostly zero pollution from the city and that it’s a fine clear sky. Second, you can grab your phone out and edit the exposure to its peak, mostly at 2.0, and turn the night mode on. A little extra tip is to make sure that you have a stable selfie stick to prevent it from moving. Once you hit the 30-second mark, which is rare for me unless there is zero light at all, make sure your hands don’t wobble (you better resist that itch when an ant crawls on your skin). The next thing you know, you’ve got the perfect Milky Way galaxy shot all on your iPhone.

I often find myself in deep admiration of how grandeur it is to witness the beauty of the night sky realizing that among the trillions of stars in the universe you see at night, these glowing band of light is part of our own home galaxy. It’s a sight we will never stop admiring even in the most mundane of times.

Moments like these make me question how we came to exist in this world, and how the mystery and wonder of God’s blessings revealed in the night sky. We have always loved sipping our hot chocolate beneath the stars, sitting by the campfire facing nature’s dark vastness illuminated only by the moonlight as conversations shift deeper and deeper towards what lies beyond life after death and human consciousness.

There’s something humbling in knowing that the stars we see have aligned across time, that most of them have already died millions of years ago, and that their light is only reaching us now traveling across space long after their existence has ended. Perhaps that’s the magic of it all, that even what is gone can still illuminate its way to us.