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Serge Brunier is a French journalist, photographer and writer who specialises in popularising astronomy. He is a regular contributor to Science & Vie magazine and to the France Info radio station. He has written numerous popular astronomy books, which have been translated into over ten languages. Brunier is also a prize-winning photographer who has captured images of solar eclipses from the most amazing places in the world. A life-long quest for the best skies available led him to Chile. "I finally found those ideal, dark and silent nights that all astronomers dream of, a world away, in the Atacama Desert," he says.

To create the 360-degree panoramic image of our galaxy, the Milky Way, Serge Brunier spent several weeks between the period of August 2008 and February 2009 capturing the sky, mostly from the ESO observatories at La Silla and Paranal in Chile. In order to cover the full Milky Way, Brunier also made a week-long trip to La Palma in the Canary Islands to photograph the northern skies.

"I wanted to show a sky that everyone can relate to — with its constellations, its thousands of stars, with names familiar since childhood, its myths shared by all civilisations since Homo became Sapiens," says Brunier. "The image was therefore made as man sees it, with a regular digital camera under the dark skies of the Atacama Desert and on La Palma."

Serge Brunier is a photographer for "The World At Night" (TWAN) project, which captures photographs and time-lapse videos of historical sites against the night sky and celestial events.