<p>Galaxies are not curved, as ours appears to be in this image; they are more or less flat or rounded discs in space. The curved appearance results from perspective and other distortions created by the compression from a wide-angle lens. 
</p><p>Nevertheless, some might consider it an intriguing view, especially with the juxtaposition of a foreground taken with a much less extreme wide angle lens. 
</p><p>The stars were photographed a couple of weeks ago during darkness of a new moon using a Rokinon 12mm f/2.8 fisheye lens, taken a few hours after the milky way rose above the eastern horizon. I took a stack of 20 images with my Nikon D800E, each a 30 second exposure at ISO 3200 and with the lens wide open. I used StarryLandscapeStacker to align and stack the frames and apply median filtering to reduce image noise. I made the foreground image long ago with a Nikon D90. It was taken during the post-sunset blue hour, providing soft lighting. Both images were shot in the Bisti Wilderness of northern New Mexico.
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I can’t help but note that our galaxy has maybe 100 billion stars, and there are perhaps 500 billion galaxies in the visible part of the universe. Yet one can make a case that, if the universe is finite, though mind-bogglingly large, this scene might well be unique.
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/people/53986933@N00">John Fowler</a> from Placitas, NM, USA
CC BY 2.0
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/snowpeak/41733575944/">Arc of the Galaxy</a>