This beautiful wide field spans some 40 degrees across, deep in the Southern Milky Way around the constellation Crux (The Cross). It was framed with the bright Alpha and Beta Centauri in the left corner, and the largest nebula in the night sky, the Carina Nebula (or Eta Carinae Nebula, NGC3372) in the right corner.The famous dark Coalsack nebula is in the center, some 600 light-years away. Several deep sky objects can be seen around this wide field, including star clusters, dark and bright nebulae, such as the Running Chicken (or Lambda Centauri - IC2944), 10 times more distant than the Coalsack [1,2].

Crux, the South pointer is a well-known constellation in the Southern Hemisphere, most prominently visible during the southern Fall months. Since ancient times, this asterism intrigued indigenous groups that once inhabited South America, Africa and Australia. In this deep sky mosaic not only the constellation brightest stars are visible, but also a very dense starfield on the Milky Way clouds nearby, filled with nebulae and clusters.
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After several processing attempts and 5 complete reworks, I decided to let this image go. It was captured as a mosaic, and includes panels shot in several dates, mostly from Autumn 2021, but also including a previous mosaic of the Crux-Carina region.I love doing deep sky wide-field mosaics, and a 2x3 array was perfect to capture the field with a full frame camera and 135mm lens. It expands the previous mosaic, also a 2x3, albeit with the smaller APS-C sensor. The image stitching was handled using a combination of AstroPixelProcessor and PixInsight. The keen-eyed might find some stitching imperfections, but as I said, I decided it was time to let the image go.

The end result really pleased my eyes: the colours and detail made this my best effort on the area. My goal was to emphasize the contrast of the region, both in terms of color and brightness (Milky Way stars and dark nebulae). The extremely dense starfield makes emphasizing the nebulosity extremely challenging. Besides the very bright Carina nebula (and also IC2944), the field has several faint wisps of Ha barely above the noise (and starfield) floor, including the "Coalsack Loop", which can just barely be seen.

Constructive criticism, comments and suggestions are more than welcome in the comments section! 

Dates: 1st June 2019, 21 March, 4th and 9th April 2021
Location: My Observatory, MG, Brazil. Rural Skies (Bortle 3, calculated SQM ~21.4)
Cameras: Canon EOS 6D (mod) at ISO 1600 and Canon EOS T5/1200D (mod) at ISO800
Optics: Samyang 135mm f/2, operated at f/2.4
Mount: Sky-Watcher HEQ5, tracking, guiding (2019); Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer, tracking (2021)
Exposure Detail: multi-panel mosaic (total 14). Base: 2x3 panel, 99x120s; Added Crux-Coalsack (34x60s) and Crux-Carina (74x120s, 2019). Total integration 380min or 6.3h.
Software: APP, PI, PS (processing).

[1] APOD 2019/04/26
[2] APOD 2018/12/27