It takes good equipment and great patience to take good pictures and this picture demonstrates plenty of both.  This is an image of our night sky with the milky way as the center piece. It is an amalgamation of over 3000 CCD images. If you want details of the multiple locations used, PC it was processed on (Linux by the way) it is all here. Or you could just sit back and admire our own galaxy, approximately 13 Billion years old and still hanging on to its good looks. The image shows stars 1000 times fainter than the eye can see and includes galaxies, star clusters and nebulae. Click on the image to go to Alex’s site for a zoomable version.

Credit: Axel Mellinger, A Color All-Sky Panorama Image of the Milky Way, Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific 121, 1180-1187 (2009).