The photographer Babak Tafreshi at the edge of Grand Canyon in a moonlit night. Despite moonlight the brighter part of the Milky Way appears on the left. Bright stars Altair and Vega are also notable there. In the middle right Polaris, the North Star, and the rest of constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear) are visible through passing high clouds. The panorama ends at right with bright star Capella. The Grand Canyon in northern Arizona is the longest canyon on the Earth, a steep-sided gorge carved by the Colorado River steadily in about 17 million year time span. The canyon is 446 km long, ranges in width from about 6 to 29 km and attains a depth of more than 1.6 km or about a mile.