Southern Milky Way, from Lupus to Puppis constellations, rises from Patagonian desert. In the upper right corner the two Magellanic clouds are almost at zenit. South celestial pole is between them and Milky Way. Despite a almost full moon sky was marvelous: only light pollution derives on the right from the sun, which at this latitude in summer is only 15° below the horizon, on the left from the moon and the nearby town of El Calafate, 20 km away. 
This image is a pretty complex composition of a panorama for the landscape (1), lightened by the moon, an integrated panorama (2) for the lower part of the sky and a fully-processed integrated mosaic (3) for the upper sky. I decided to take a mosaic to mitigate the optic aberration and lens distortions introduced by wide photographic lenses. Each panel is an integrated composition of single not-tracked exposures. 

Site: 20 km south from El Calafate town, Patagonia, Argentina. 
Date: 11th of January 2023, around 1 am

I set this complex pipeline for both acquisition and processing to mitigate all defects in my setup. I think that this image is a good example of what is possible to achive when you perfectly know your setup. This is the only setup I can afford at the moment when I travel, but I am really happy of how results I can reach.

So, this is my message: always do your best, know you setup and push it to its limits! With the right know-how good pictures are always possible, even with a simple tripod, a non-mod APS-C reflex and a wide photographic lens!


Landscape 1 (Patagonian desrt): single subs of 30s mounted on Photoshop.
Lanscape 2 (lower sky, to preserve atmospheric halos and fogs): panorama of 4 integrated images, each made of 20 subs (13s each, 800 ISO, f 5.6).
Landscape 3 (fully processed sky): mosaic of 8 integrated images (same of landscape 2 plus other 4), each made of 20 subs (13s each, 800 ISO, f 5.6); panels have been projected with Mercator projection using Acrux star as center of the projection.

For landscape 3 panels this is my PixInsight pipeline: background removal with synthetic flat, color calibration with SPCC, BlurXterminator, NoiseXtrerminator; Mercator projection of each panel and mosaic integration with average merging. 

Clear sky to everyone!