This is a 160°-wide panorama of the Milky Way arching over the late Cretaceous Badlands formations at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, taken on a moonlit night in May, juxtaposing the dramatic earth tones with the bluish sky above. The waxing crescent Moon is low and off frame at left and is providing the warm illumination. Capella is the bright star at far left. The Summer Triangle stars are right of centre, with bright Vega at top. Cassiopeia and Perseus are at left; Cygnus is at centre. Haze in the sky adds the natural star glows but also mutes the contrast in the Milky Way and adds the horizon glows. However, a weak aurora adds a green and magenta glow to the northern horizon at centre. This is a blend of a 6-segment panorama framed for the sky, with a matching 6-segment panorama framed for the ground, layered, masked and blended in Photoshop. Segments were spaced 30° apart with the camera in landscape orientation. The sky segments are untracked, each 20 seconds at f/2.8 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens. The ground segments are each 30 seconds also at f/2.8. All were with the Canon R6 at ISO 3200. I should have used 1 to 2 minutes each for the ground panorama, shot at a lower ISO, but it was late! Stitching was with Adobe Camera Raw. I applied a Dynamic Contrast filter to the ground using ON1 Effects, and a mild Orton glow effect using Luminar AI. Shot May 16, 2021.
The northern summer Milky Way rising on a spring night at Dinosaur Provincal Park, Alberta. This is a 180° panorama from northwest, at left, where the waxing crescent Moon is setting, over to southeast, at right, where Scorpius and the galactic centre is rising. The Summer Triangle stars are at centre; Cassiopeia is left of centre; Auriga and Gemini are setting at far left amid the glow of the setting Moon. The sky was hazy, adding the natural star glows, horizon clouds and tints. No light pollution or starglow filter was employed. This was May 15/16, 2021 about 1 am. This is a blend of tracked exposures for the sky and untracked exposures for the ground. The sky is a stitch of 9 segments at 30° spacings, each 1 minute at ISO 1600 with the original Canon 24mm L lens at f/2. The camera was in portrait orientation. The ground is a stitch of 18 segments at 15° spacings and taken after the sky segments with the tracker motor off, each ground segment 2 minutes at ISO 3200 with the lens at f/4 for more depth of field. Both passes were single row panoramas, with the camera unchanged in altitude. All with the Canon EOS Ra camera on the Move-Shoot-Move (MSM) rotator/tracker with the Alyn Wallace Z Plate to allow the camera to pan horizontally on the level, despite the tracker being tipped over polar aligned. All stitching was with Adobe Camera Raw, to create two panoramas, which were then layered, masked (using Select Sky) and blended in Photoshop. A mild Orton glow effect added with Luminar AI. I have left some satellites in.
This is composition taking in many of the bright and not so bright nebulas in and around the Sword and Belt of Orion. At bottom is the bright Orion Nebula, Messier 42. Above it is the bluish Running Man Nebula, NGC 1973-5-7. At centre is the famous dark Horsehead Nebula, B33, silhouetted against the bright glow of IC 434. Above it, and above the blue star Alnitak is the pinkish Flame Nebula, NGC 2024. At top left is the reflection nebula complex of Messier 78 and NGC 2071. Numerous other small patches of nebulosity shine around the Belt stars at right of centre. The large Barnard's Loop, Sh-2-276, just sneaks into the corner of the frame at top left. This is a blend of filtered and unfiltered images: a stack of 8 x 8-minute exposures through an Optolong L-Enhance filter blended with a stack of 12 x 8-minute exposures without a filter, with the filtered shots at ISO 3200 and unfiltered shots at ISO 800. Stacks of 4 x 2-minute at ISO 800 and 4 x 2-minute at ISO 200 are also blended in with luminosity masks to retain the details in the bright core of the Orion Nebula, and to shrink the stars. All were with the Canon EOS Ra mirrorless camera shooting through the William Optics RedCat 51mm astrograph at f/5 (250mm focal length). The unfiltered shots were taken the night after the filtered shots, as incoming haze and ice fog cut short the shoot on the first night, January 9, 2021, and prevented more filtered shots (for lower noise) without haze. As it is, some haze surrounds the stars. The RedCat is equipped with the Starizona filter drawer accessory to make it easier to swap the filter in and out without affecting camera position. This was on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount and guided with the made-in-Hungary Lacerta MGEN3 autoguider which also controlled the camera and applied a dithering motion between each shot to help remove thermal noise. No dark frames were taken nor was Long Exposure Noise Reduction applied in camera, though it was -5° C these nights, chilly but mild for January here in Alberta. All stacking, aligning and mean or median combining (the latter to eliminate some geosat trails) was done in Photoshop 2021. Luminosity masks to enhance the faint nebulosity and apply star masks where needed were created with the Lumenzia extension panel. The masking helps compress the dynamic range, allowing the faintest nebulosity to be enhanced without blowing out the bright highlights like the core of M42. But inevitably, the Orion Nebula ends up looking dimmer than it really is in relation to the other nebulas in the field.
