The Milky Way in Sagittarius and Scorpius, low in the south, over Mt. Rundle in Banff, Alberta, from the shore of Two Jack Lake, June 3, 2016. Saturn is the bright object at upper right, then in Ophiuchus just above Scorpius. Some thin cloud fuzzed the images of Saturn and stars. The foreground is partly illuminated by car headlights, to light up the green landscape. Wind made the water rough and unreflective. This is a stack of 4 x 25 second exposures (mean combined to smooth noise) for the ground and a single 25-second exposure for the sky, untracked but with just slight trailing. All at f/2.2 with the 35mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 3200. Shot as part of a 280-frame time-lapse and star trail sequence, though that was partly ruined by the car headlights. Here they help somewhat.
Mars, the bright “star” at left in Scorpius, rising opposite the Sun and the sunset sky, near the date of its 2016 opposition. Opposition was May 22; I shot this May 25, on the first available clear night! The 270° panorama illustrates how a planet at opposition (when it is closest to Earth) appears opposite the Sun in the sky, rising in the east as the Sun sets in the west. (Or in this case, rising in the southeast as the Sun set in the northwest.) Saturn, then a couple of weeks before its opposition date, is also rising just above the horizon to the left of Mars. Mars was in the head of Scorpius. For this scene, I waited until well after sunset to get the sky darker and more stars appearing in the deepening twilight, though the sky to the northwest was still bright with sunset colours in the long 8-second exposures I used for each of the frames here. This is a stitch in Adobe Camera Raw of 9 segments, each with the Canon 35mm lens at f/5.6 and Canon 6D at ISO 800. I shot using the iPano panorama unit though this was just a single tier horizon pan hardly needing a motorized unit to shoot. Each frame is a single exposure — this is not an HDR pano.
Mars (at right) shining brightly near its May 22, 2016 opposition in the head of Scorpius over the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. Saturn is to the left of Mars, with Antares in Scorpius below the two planets, forming a triangle of “stars” in the moonlit sky. A waxing gibbous Moon off frame at right supplies the illumination. The Milky Way is barely visible at left in the moonlit sky. Dinosaur Provincial Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site, preserving the world’s richest collection of late Cretaceous fossils from the end of the age of dinosaurs. I shot this the night of May 16/17 from The Trail of the Fossil Hunters trail. This was with the Nikon D750 and Sigma 24mm lens. I shot this at the end of a 3-hour time-lapse sequence.
