What exactly did I shoot?

I took a shot of the night sky on holiday, thinking I had the Milky Way. Turns out, well, it doesn't quite look like what I expected of the Milky Way (and what's that big cluster there top left?). Can you guys help me find out what I have here? I tried looking up a sky map but can't really figure out how it works.

Also, what are your thoughts on the processing? Too dark, too light, too much color, etc.?

Here's some relevant data: I was overlooking Mount Bromo (Indonesia) facing south-west, give or take (my exact coordinates were 7.921831 S, 112.963445 E and you can see ). This was taken on June 13 around midnight local time - 4 pm GMT if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure that'd be the Milky Way. If you're in a dark location it's almost identifiable without the camera but you've gotten a nice shot of it here. Color looks good. You have a great shot here with the exception of what looks like cloud cover on the left.

CameraMan wrote in post #14683895
I'm pretty sure that'd be the Milky Way. If you're in a dark location it's almost identifiable without the camera but you've gotten a nice shot of it here. Color looks good. You have a great shot here with the exception of what looks like cloud cover on the left.

Yeah, those were clouds. Only one night there though, so I took what I had (also, to be honest, I didn't really see them during the shoot, since it was so dark).

Huh, I kind of expected to see the classic almond-shaped cloud of light barred by the dark line along its length. Would I have needed more exposures to see all that?

How long was your exposure for this shot? Looks like you had the shutter open for quite a while.

It's a bit hard to tell but it looks to me like the Eta Carina section of the Milky Way. Eta Carina is a fairly large area of gas glowing from newly formed stars. You have a pinkish glow that's about the right shape and there are some some groups of stars in the right place. If that's the case then the southern cross would be just outside of the shot in the top left corner. The bright one right in the corner is probably the bottom star of the cross. Yes, you have got a section of the milky way.

CameraMan wrote in post #14685041
How long was your exposure for this shot? Looks like you had the shutter open for quite a while.

I stacked 7 frames of between 10 and 20 seconds, ISO 3200 or 6400, f/2.8. I think DSS told me the total exposure time was around 2 minutes. I actually didn't go out thinking I was going to stack them (actually, wasn't even aware of the technique), which explains the uneven parameters of the shots. It's only when I read about DSS that I thought 'hey, maybe I could do that with all the crap I shot'.

@Steve: thanks!

Fiddled with some more stuff; better?

Nicely done

This is the Eta Carina part of the Milky Way. Southern Cross will be near the top left corner of the image but is outside the frame.

Cool, thanks for the info (and the kind words ). So I need to go even wider to get the entire thing? What's the longest lens with which you can get the entire Milky Way in the frame (on a FF camera)?

The milky way surrounds our planet, so it will fill the visible sky and then some! So lens wise you need to select something that shoots the whole sky if you want as much as possible in one shot.

great shot! I never thought of staking those photos either!