Trees, Sky, Galactic Eye

Is beauty in the eye of this beholder? Earlier this month, over Runion Island in the Indian Ocean, a playful photographer with an eye for the sky took eight images and composed the above intriguing picture. The full fisheye frame shows everything above the horizon, including a lamp-illuminated landscape around the edges, and the zenith of the sky directly overhead. The image, however, may be more than beautiful — it may also be a scavenger hunt. Can you find the photographer’s tent, the slope of a volcano (active Piton de la Fournaise ), a picturesque shoreline, and the lights of the nearby town ( Saint Philippe )? One remarkable feature of the above image is that its center contains the very center of our Milky Way Galaxy.