Each spring, I look forward to the return of the Milky Way core to the night sky! While the night sky is filled with many spectacular regions for stargazing and astrophotography, none are as visually spectacular and popular to photograph as the galactic core. To achieve a high-detail and low-noise result, this image is a stack of about 20 images totaling 30 minutes of exposure time for the sky, and 4 images totaling about 7 minutes of exposure time for the foreground. A star tracker was used to capture the long exposures of the sky, and was turned off for the foreground images. I capture the scene in California’s Joshua Tree National Park, where the temperatures dropped to -7°C (19°F) in the early morning hours as the Milky Way rose in the southeastern skies.