Curiosity

'In April 2018, I spent 7 nights working as a visiting astronomer at the James Clerk Maxwell telescope on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. During that time, the weather ranged from "quite unpleasant" to "evacuating the summit in the middle of the night due to snow storms". Hopes weren't high for my last night which coincided with this year's VLBI run (a collaboration of almost a dozen telescopes all over the world pointing towards the same sources in the sky). However, shortly after arriving for our shift, the sky cleared and we were rewarded with an absolutely breathtaking view as the sun went down behind the busy SMA telescopes, one of which is shown in the photograph.
The picture was taken with a Canon EOS 750D, 1/100s exposure time, ISO 320, 64mm focal length, no post-processing.'

Franziska Schmidt

Institution: University College London