First published on May 29 on NASA’s APOD website (Astronomy Picture of the Day), the photograph has been gaining traction ever since after being spotlighted by a growing number of portals.
Shot on April 15th, the striking image depicts a narrow, stony pathway leading to a rocky ridge. Behind, the sky is streaked in an array of spellbinding colors: a rich golden clouddeck gives way to fantastical green skies before these themselves ebb into deeper, darker shades.
Adding to the hypnotic sense of beauty, the grand arch of the Milky Way forms an almost perfect crescent over the rugged outcrop, the exquisite composition given added elegance by gossamer like clouds and blotches of purple. As ethereal as it is finely detailed, among the stars that are visible are Vega and Altair.
Scouting out the viewpoint earlier in the day, the photograph, says Rosadziński, took careful planning. “This photo cost me the most in terms of effort,” he says. “Just getting there meant walking 1.5 kilometers. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re carrying a 10 kilo backpack and haven’t slept all night your perspective changes quickly!”
Taken on the Portuguese island of Madeira, Rosadziński took the winning snap at a viewpoint known as Pedra Rija - located between the two highest peaks on the island, it’s a notoriously difficult climb. “Returning to the parking lot you have to go uphill,” he says, “and because of the weather conditions I had to spend two nights there.”
His efforts, however, have now been widely saluted. Tomasz Kundera from Kraków’s Jagiellonian University said: “In the case of APOD, there’s a huge competition between astrophotographers the world over to have their pictures selected… So far, very few people from Poland have had their work shown on APOD.”
Making Rosadziński’s achievement all the more remarkable is the fact that this is not the first time his photographs have been cherry-picked by NASA. In 2023, NASA also chose an image of the Milky Way taken on the island of La Palma.
Living in Modlniczka near Kraków, and working for a multinational in his professional life, the plaudits that have come Rosadziński’s way have been deserved, making it even harder to believe that he only began experimenting with astrophotography just three years ago.
“Being selected twice is rare,” says Kundera, “but it proves the great quality of this astrophotographer's work.”
