A few weeks ago my wife and I were visiting family in rural Iowa. The population is pretty thin in this farming area so they have fairly dark skies. I was fortunate to have a couple of clear nights and took this picture on that second night. The picture is looking across a hayfield to the south with the Milky Way arcing up into the sky. Sagittarius is near the horizon, with stars of Scutum, Aquila, Sagitta, Serpens and Ophiuchus visible. Many Messier objects are also visible.
This image is a stack of 25 one minute exposures taken with a Canon 40D. I used a Canon 17-85 EF-S zoom lens set to the 17mm position (28mm equivalent). That gave me a very wide field of view. Star tracking was done with a small unguided tabletop GEM with a battery powered RA drive motor attached. I carried all this equipment with me on the airplane. It kept the TSA inspectors busy. Processing was done with ImagesPlus and Photoshop.
