Seeing the Magellanic Clouds for the first time in the Atacama Desert (OC)

Photographed near Tulor in the Atacama Desert on the night of August 21. The sky is awash with pink airglow from oxygen and nitrogen atoms, excited by sunlight during the day and emitting light as they return to a lower energy state at night. The Magellanic Clouds, dwarf galaxies in our local group, rise in the southern sky.

Photographed with an astromodified Sony A7III and a Sony 50mm lens. The foreground shot was 20s, f/1.4, ISO1250. The sky was a stack of 50x20s, f/1.4, ISO1250, shot from the same vantage point.