A stunning dawn sky on the day of summer solstice. This is the array of four naked-eye planets at dawn on solstice morning, June 21, 2022, with Venus just right of centre low in the twilight; Mars and Jupiter at right; and Saturn at far right, plus the waning last quarter Moon below Jupiter. Unusually, the planets appear from east to west across the sky in the same order as they are in distance out from the Sun. As a bonus, an extensive display of noctilucent clouds appears at left in the northern sky over my house. The dawn twilight colours the sky at centre in the northeast. This was from home at latitude 51° North, where the bright sky and low altitude of the planets made it tough to capture them more distinctly. However, they were all easily visible to the naked eye. While Mercury was just rising at this time to the left and below of Venus, it does not appear here as it was too low and lost in the bright twilight. It was not visible in binoculars. This is a panorama of 13 segments, each 1-second exposures, with the Canon RF 28-70mm lens at 28mm and f/2.8, with the Canon R5 at ISO 100. Stitched with Camera Raw. The original image is 35,200 pixels wide.
A panorama of NLCs – noctilucent clouds – aka PMCs or polar mesospheric clouds, taken on June 20, 2022 about 11:40 pm MDT, from home in southern Alberta. After many cloudy nights and some clear nights with no NLCs, this was my first sighting since June 1. The bright luminous mesospheric clouds lit by sunlight at high altitude contrast with the dark tropospheric clouds to the left at low altitude. The bright star Capella in Auriga, low in the north and circumpolar from my latitude of 51° N, is left of centre. The stars of Perseus are at upper right. This is a panorama cropped from 9 segments of 5-second exposures, with the RF24-105mm lens at f/4 and 80mm, and with the Canon R5 at ISO 400. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.
This is a blend of exposures showing all the satellites (and a few aircraft) recorded by the camera on a late spring night (June 1-2, 2022) from latitude 51° North, from where and when satellites are illuminated all night long and can be seen all through the short night. This is looking almost due south. This illustrates the very crowded sky above us now. And likely none of these are SpaceX Starlink satellites, as most of those are now below naked-eye brightness when in their final orbits. The satellites recorded here would have mostly been visible to the naked-eye. Most of the brightest satellites are also polar-orbiting, in north-south paths here. The Space Station did not make any passes this night. A few trails (the colourful ones, made of lots of dots) are from aircraft. And some very short streaks are meteors, or perhaps flaring satellites. The inset shows a blow up of the central area, showing even more satellites, the fainter ones, visible at that greater scale. The field of view of the main image is 120° wide. This is a stack of 515 exposures taken over 3 hours 15 minutes from 11:23 pm to 2:38 am MDT on June 1-2, 2022, each 20 seconds long with the 11mm TTArtisan full-frame fish-eye lens at f/2.8 and the Canon R5 at ISOs from 1600 to 6400, shifted through the night. The camera was on a star tracker, the Star Adventurer Mini, to follow the sky and keep the stars more or less stationary. A slight drift in the tracking motion has made the stars trail slightly. But having the tracker follow the sky means the ground was blurred, as well as sky content such as clouds and light pollution glows. Thus the streaks in the sky. The ground image comes from a single exposure in the middle of the sequence, layered in and masked. Gaps in the satellite trails are from the 1-second interval between exposures. Stacked with the now-discontinued Advanced Stacker Plus actions.
