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About 2 hours north of San Pedro de Atacama is Machuca Territory.
The tribe that live here are the only that haven't sold their water rights to the giant mining companies. The result is a literal oasis full of flamingos, cacti, rivers, salt plains, geysers, and astonishing night views like this....

photo is made of 2 frames

60 seconds tracked for the stars (ISO 2000, f/3, 60 seconds)
60 seconds untracked for the land (ISO 5000, f/5.6, 60 seconds)

Lumix S5
Lumix 24-70 pro
Benro Polaris

Wow! This looks like a total utopia! Awesome work!

Awesome work here!

Great sky capture :)

That is amazing. I'm completely new to astrophotography but I see everything from satellite tracks to hydrogen nebulae. Can you provide a little more detail on how you captured so much in a single 60 second expose of the sky? Cheers.

Two things - first the sky was tracked with a benro Polaris, that's why I don't have star trails.

Second - this is one of the darkest places on earth. No light pollution for hundreds of miles. I'm also at an altitude of around 4000 meters so there's little atmosphere to shoot through, and the atmosphere is bone dry. This is why some of the world's largest observatories are in this region.

Is that the Licancabur volcano far away?

Charles, just beautiful! The Atacama is on my list. How did you go about getting there. Cheers

I'm going there December but unfortunately milky way is not visible in December ☹️

Pictures like this make me want to quit my job and travel the world

Love it, is beautiful

Nice shot! my best contact with the starry sky was in this desert! for sure the best trip I have ever done, even though the photo is amazing it's only a fraction of the beauty of the sky.

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There are still plenty of visible stars, just not the galactic core. You can still get wonderful night photos at this time.

I swam

Plane from Auckland to Santiago to Calama, then rented a car. Underestimated the distances, we did a lot of driving just scouting for photo spots.

You could spend years photographing there.... In fact that's what I plan on doing. Setting up a business to take people out for astrophotography. There are heaps of 3-4 hour astronomy tours, but few that give you time to take out your camera and capture scenes like this.

Gets a bit complex as many of the most interesting spots are closed at night (Valle de la luna etc), so I'm negotiating with indigenous leaders to see what can be done.

That is gorgeous!