Is the D5000 enough for this kind of shot?

Is the D5000 enough for this kind of shot?

These are my gadgets
Nikon D5000
18-55mm
Sigma 70-300mm DG Macro

This picture more then likely went through ALOT of image manipulation. Its not possible to get that kind of view from earth, I think that's something that can only be seen in space, you can also see that the plants in lower area have had a flash fired in there direction, So get a good picture of some sort of greenery, then play with the exposure in your editing software, afterwards use layers to add that space background.

If you don't have anything to edit with I highly recommend GIMP its 100% free
Windows:
http://download.cnet.com/...entBody;1d
Mac:
http://download.cnet.com/...entBody;2d

Close. You don't need to overcomplicate the shot, use the 18-55 mm lens, add a tripod and some foreground lighting. A powerful strobe with infinitely variable power on an adjustable stand would help to simplify the shot itself. It might take some editing after the fact, but most modestly experienced photographers could duplicate this shot fairly easily with a little calcuation and very few exposures.

By itself, no. That's a composite photo. The sky part of the photo was taken with a timed exposure and the camera mounted on a motor drive which turned the camera in the exact direction, and at the exact speed of the rotation of the Earth - probably as part of a telescope rig. The foreground was shot separately, and the two photos were stitched together in Photoshop. There was likely quite a bit more post-processing that went on as well - the foreground image itself may also be a composite.

***EDIT: BooM - look at the length of the star trails in the pic. If that's from a camera that isn't on a motor drive, it's an exposure of a minute, max - probably less. You can't pull that much information out of the Sagittarius arm in that amount of time without using a very, very high ISO. You'd have to shoot at 25600, or something, at least. If the photog was using a high ISO on a timed exposure of a minute, where's the noise? Even if the photog somehow managed to get that exposure at, say, 6400 (max ISO on a D5000) on a one minute exposure, removing that kind of resulting noise would degrade the image much more than it appears. The sky portion was a tracked exposure of much longer than a minute, shot at a low ISO and pasted into the final shot later. Good luck at getting that kind of image at the D5000's max ISO of 6400 with under a minute's worth of exposure.