While it is well known that the north of Chile is the place of the largest and best observatories in the world, I tried a shot just with my DSLR and a wide angle lense in the Torres del Paine National Park which is located in the south of Chile.
This is a great place too as there is hardly any light pollution. So I took this shot in a clear and dry November night at about 11 pm.
The sunset had not yet fully occured which gave a stunning color gradient from yellow via green, light blue, purple to dark blue and black.
Originally I just wanted a shot of the famous Southern Cross but ended up with half the Milky Way and as special gift a little shooting star … Actually the galactic center is on the very right of the picture.
If you want to know what you actually see on the photograph, please see below. I marked the most interesting objects.
BTW: This shot was taken with a Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM on a Canon EOS 5DSR. I selected 20 seconds exposure time, open aperture, ISO 3200 and obviously manual focus; no stacking or anything else. It is amazing what the 50 megapixel sensor of this DSLR can capture! I finished the photograph in Adobe Lightroom reducing noise and increasing clarity and dynamic. (The uploaded photo is reduced in size.)
A great website, that shows many details of the Milky Way (although in German) and helped my to assign the names to the various objects is www.abenteuer-sterne.de.
structures & shapes 