Milky Way shines over Yellowstone

A panoramic photograph shows the Milky Way arching over Silex Spring, a thermal pool about ten metres wide in Yellowstone National Park.

By El Medio Oriente

August 16, 2026

The Milky Way arches over a dark starry sky, with a bright blue thermal spring surrounded by white vapour in the foreground and coniferous trees silhouetted against the horizon. — The Milky Way curves over Silex Spring in Yellowstone National Park, creating a striking composition that contrasts the celestial vault with turquoise-blue thermal waters and the vapour rising from the geothermal spring. (NASA — Breaking News)

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The Milky Way was not created by an evaporating lake. The colourful water pool, approximately ten metres wide, is known as Silex Spring and is located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States. The colours seen in the water are caused by layers of bacteria growing in the thermal spring, artificially illuminated. Vapour rises from the spring, heated by underground magma associated with the Yellowstone hotspot.

Unrelated to the spring and at great distance, the central band of the Milky Way Galaxy arches over the horizon, illuminated by billions of stars. The photograph is a panorama of sixteen images taken in 2014.

If the Yellowstone hotspot caused another supervolcanic eruption like the one that occurred approximately 640,000 years ago, a large part of North America would be affected.