“I try to capture a sense of awe, a sense of wonder about our world,” says National Geographic Photographer and Explorer Stephen Wilkes. And this is exactly what he did in the four epic photographs he made for our America the Beautiful cover story.

Laden with heavy bags of camera gear, Stephen and his team hiked into the remote site at Bears Ears National Monument, perched on a sandstone cliff. Once there, they faced wind gusts of over 50 miles an hour and plenty of blowing sand. “It’s like your worst nightmare as a photographer,” he recalls.

Despite these challenges, the planets aligned for Stephen—quite literally, during a rare celestial show. The resulting cover image uses 44 of the 2,092 frames captured during this 36-hour period (pictured above; below, we zoom in on details of his composite image, such as the sunrise in the top left of the frame.)

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