I adore time spent in the Nebraska Sand Hills, one of a category of places I discovered seeking dark skies and came to love for their open spaces, clean air, and vibrant ecologies. Merritt Reservoir has been my destination for two road trips now, and it's a special place to me: remote, beautiful, and under a new moon, incredibly, incredibly dark.
That darkness makes this photo so special. The green mist you can see across the Milky Way is called sky glow -- an unusual phenonmenon these days because it requires absolute blackness of a new moon and no light pollution to reveal itself. Sky glow is the faint light emitted by ions in the upper atmosphere lowering their energy state after a full day of being hit by direct sunlight. It's almost like a deep breath let out by the molecules after a long day's work protecting us from the full blast of solar energy.
I almost didn't take this photo; it was much colder this night than predicted, and I was absolutely shaking, freezing, struggling to turn the dials on my camera, so after getting some other frames I went back to my tent and sleeping bag to warm up. I woke up after an hour or two, saw the sky was clear, and casually chose to step out for one or two more shots. The first one was this, and I was stunned into staring into the sky for another hour.