This a medium angle view (7x10 degrees) of the Winter Milky Way just East of Sirius, Alpha Canis Majoris, the brightest star on the Earth's sky after the Sun. Sirius itself is not in the picture.
Many Deep Sky Objects are present in the picture, including the long streaming red emission nebula IC2177 = Seagull Nebula to the right of the image, the little circular emission nebula Gum 1 (top right, to the right of IC2177), the small emission/reflection nebular complex Ced 90 to South of Seagull Nebula, and Thor's Helmet = NGC 2359, the incredibly beautiful reflection nebula center right of the image. Thor's Helmet is actually an interstellar bubble in a massive molecular cloud, blown away by the very intense and violent stellar wind of the Wolf-Rayet star HD56925, embedded in the image of the nebula.

Large and small dark nebulae fill the view, along with many, many open clusters, most notable Messier 47 to the East (left) of the image. I know, I missed M46, I wanted to include it, but framing was not easy. Every single star in this image is a star in our own Galaxy, the Milky Way.

7x5 minutes frames @ ISO 1600, Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 200mm F:2.8 II ED EF lens, on Astrotrac TT320X, shot from a not so great site in Antigua, just south of Hawksbill resort, beyond the fence to the nude beach :D, on Feb 16 2010. SQM measurement was 20.40 in the area, moderate light pollution, but I got lucky with the latitude, at 17N, the thing was riding high in the sky.

Deep Sky Stacker, Pixinsight 1.5.9 and Photoshop CS4. And lots of unslept nights. Enjoy.

PS
for a really good shot at these, check out Rogelio Bernard Andreo's image on APOD http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100319.html

This guy is the real thing.