Milky Way from roughly R.A. = 5.5 hr to 17.5 hr. A 3-panel mosaic. Lens wide-opened at F4.
The site in western Australia is very dark, but unfortunately we were constantly harassed by intense and colorful airglow. (Or should we call it aurora? It's near the solar maximum now, and Australia is quite close to the magnetic south pole.) This makes the sky gradient removal and mosaicking extremely difficult. Because of this, the colors of the background and objects in both the left and right corners are less accurate.
Also, the season prevented us from properly imaging the Scorpius and Galactic center region. The images there were taken well into the morning twilight, and hence the quality there isn't really good. I could just crop that area and only keep the good part, but I feel that's less interesting. I decide to keep the twilight zone and the horizon below Scorpius, to give the viewers a sense about the challenges that we were facing. This also means another trip to the southern hemisphere is unavoidable, perhaps during the solar minimum.
Rev.B has slightly adjusted color balance, to better match that of (the final version) the
previous image, which also includes the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
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