APOD: 2022 August 17 - Stargate Milky Way

We travel on to the high desert of Chilé for the August 17th Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "Stargate Milky Way." The technique used in this composite photo is called stereographic projection. I had to read up a bit on the concept, but after thinking about it I came up with this: imagine you are on the floor of a snow globe looking up. You see the dome of the sky above you in three dimensions. To produce a photograph of what you see, you must capture images in all directions, and successfully blend them together to capture the entire expanse into a single two-dimensional view. That blending process is analogous to peeling an orange and then attempting to flatten the peel without breaking or tearing it.

My apologies in advance to those more experienced shutterbugs if I've over-simplified the process. I found these three recommendations helpful on how to get started in stereographic photography: 1) use the smallest zoom possible to minimize the number of images you have to capture. 2) lock the camera's exposure, white balance, and autofocus to minimize the level of effort needed to stitch the different exposures together. 3) don't rotate the camera around you. The camera should remain at the center of the sphere you are trying to capture. If you've got an Instagram account (I don't), there's a link to the astrophotographer's page where he might have some additional notes.