This is a 50 megapixel mosaic of the southernmost parts of the Milky Way as seen from Greece during the summmers of 2017 and 2018.

The main mosaic was laid out from 62 photos taken with a Nikon D3300 and a Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX on a StarAdventurer, during the nights of July 26th and 27th, 2017, in beach in Mani, Southern Greece. ISO was set to 1600.

Each photo was taken with manual control. Since the D3300 only supports 30 seconds duration, I was counting elephants to approximate seconds. I was aiming for 60 and 75 second exposures but actual durations ranged from 59 seconds to 88 seconds. In each picture I cropped about 1/8th off every edge because the distortion was intolerable.

9 photos were chosen out of the 62 and used as "reference plates": I combined them with PixInsight's StarAlignment tool to produce a first "rough" mosaic, with repeated trial, error and cropping.

Once satisfied that the 9 plates were covering the part of the sky that I needed, I registered the other 53 images against each one of the 9 master ones, and then stacked the registered images in order to produce 9 high SNR "master plates". So each pixel in the 35mm mosaic corresponds to at least 3 and at most 40 pixels stacked from original shots.

I removed background from each master plate, and then applied a MaskedStretch transform to bring the 9 plates in roughly the same colour and luminosity level. Finally I registered the master plates against the rough mosaic I had produced before, and stitched them together to produce most of what you are seeing.

I must note that I did not calibrate the original images. Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 has no perceptible vignetting at f/4.0 (which I used) especially if you crop the edges, and there was no thermal noise to speak of. I had taken flats and darks but realised they were doing more harm (in terms of introduced noise) than good and just ditched them.

Some peculiarities of the 2017 picture: Saturn, to the west (right) of the Lagoon, slightly more elongated than the stars as planets move differently and there were two days worth of movement. And the light to the lower right corner of the picture, from an actual yacht that was partying about a mile from the beach which is otherwise one of the darkest locations in Europe, as a protected sea turtle breeding area.

In 2018 I went for detail. Select areas several degrees across were photographed with the same camera and a Samyang 125mm f/2.0 ED UMC lens, from my home in suburban Athens, throughout July and the beginning of August. Sets of 18 to 83 30" exposures at f/2.0 were produced centered around the following objects: M8 and M20, M23, M25, M6 and M7, ξ1-Sgr, γ-Sgr, δ-Scutii. ISO was set to 400 and 800. This time the exposures were calibrated (with flats only as thermal and readout noise were negligible) and each of the 8 sets was stacked, fully processed (background removal, colour calibration and even deconvolution for some of them), registered against the main mosaic (some times with tedious manual alignment) and masked-stretched.

A final layer of detail is in the three objects that I wanted to highlight. The Antares-ρOph region was its own mosaic, taken with iTelescope's T12 (Australia) and T20 (New Mexico) throughout June 2018. Both scopes are Takahashi 106mm APO refractors but the T12 has a superior sensor and a far better view of Antares so I used it for the vast majority of the material. I captured more than 100 luminosity pics (1 to 3 minutes) and 16 each of RGB (1 to 2 minutes) and applied a standard Pixinsight SRGB workflow. The final image was registered against my main mosaic. To my great satisfaction the colours matched the ones taken with the humble D3300 very well, presumably because of the very dark location.

The other two objects with extra detail are the Lagoon nebula (taken with 5 minute luminosity exposure and 1 minute each of RGB using T30 which is a 500mm reflector although I am still not certain that the only meaningful contribution of the T30 exposure to the final image which is the extra pinkish colour was worth including it) and the Cat's Paw nebula (T12 again, 3x2min L + 1x1min R,G,B). I also have itelescope photos of the Triffid and of various globulars in this mosaic but I didn't include them as they would make it look too unnatural.

So, the main mosaic was gradient merged again with my 8 "detail images" from Athens and and the other 3 from itelescope (I used an average combination method to make it less artificial) and there you have it.

471 raw shots were used in total: 62 with the 35mm lens, 294 with the 135mm lens, 103 with the Takahashis for Antares, and 6+6 with the Takahashis for the Lagoon and the Cat's Paw. This of course is without counting flats and other auxiliary shots. Total integrated time in some parts of the image such as the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud exceeds one hour, but maximum single exposure was 5 minutes. To me the photo is important because it shows what is achievable using means within an amateur's reach, hence its title.

The picture is dedicated to my wife.