The view of the night sky as seen from Dante's View. It took me a while
to figure out that the orange glow to the south (7 o'clock position in this
image) was actually from Los Angeles, more than 200 miles away.
Here is an animated gif with some objects of interest labeled.
Your astronomy lesson for the day is a brief discussion of the
difference between the Milky Way and the Zodiacal Light.
Most of us are familiar with the Milky Way which, if fortunate
enough to be in an area with little light pollution, is that band
of starlight most prominent in the summer evenings. That band
of light is from the billions of stars seen when looking through
one of the arms of our galaxy.
The Zodiacal Light is a slightly rarer phenomenon where, again
if fortunate enough to be in an area with little light pollution, one
sees an elongated triangle of light around astronomical twilight very
near where the Sun sets or rises. This faint glow is actually sunlight
being reflected off of the dust particles that are the remnants of the
material that formed the planets in our solar system. So that band of
light is not from billions of stars, but from one star, our Sun, as being
reflected off of lots of dust particles. Kind of like what one sees when
shining a flashlight into the fog.
You can also see the Andromeda Galaxy in this image which is the most distant object that can
be seen with the naked eye, some 2.5 million lightyears away. So the light from Las Vegas took
about 0.1 milliseconds to reach Dante's View, the light from Los Angeles took about 0.3 milliseconds,
the light reflected from Jupiter (about 400 million miles away on this date) took about 35 minutes,
and the light from the Andromeda Galaxy took 2.5 million years. Amazing stuff.