The Milky Way arching over Emerald Lake and Emerald Lake Lodge in Yoho National Park, BC. This was on June 6, 2016 and despite it being about 1:30 am, the sky, especially to the north at left, is still lit by blue twilight from the short solstice night. Unfortunately, the lights from the Lodge, in particular one bright unshielded sodium vapour light, illuminates the foreground and even across the lake. The lights are themselves not overly bright but the long exposures in such images really brings out how much they do light the night landscape. They should be shielded or reduced in number, or put on motion sensors to light only when necessary. Or all of the above! The Summer Triangle stars are at centre top. High haze fuzzes the star images. Vega is the brightest star at upper right. Mt. Burgess, home to the famous Burgess Shale Cambrian explosion fossils, is at centre. My other camera is at left, on a tripod, shooting a time-lapse sequence. I could have cloned it out but decided to leave it in. This is a panorama over about 180°, made of 24 segments but cropped in quite a bit from the original, and all shot on the iPano panning unit. Each exposure was 30 seconds at f/2.2 with the Sigma 24mm lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 4000. One short exposure of the lodge was blended in to reduce its light glare. Stitched in PTGui. The original is 15,000 x 9,000 pixels.
A 360° panorama of the Milky Way and night sky taken at the south end of the Bison Compound in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada. I shot this Sept 21, 2014 on a very clear night with a faint aurora appearing to the north (right of centre) and some airglow to the north and south. The ground is lit solely by starlight. The faint glow of Gegenschein is visible at left above the road low in the south. This is a stitch of 8 segments, each shot with the 15mm full-frame fisheye lens, for 1 minute at f/2.8 and with the Canon 6D at ISO 5000. I used PTGui to stitch the segments, with this version being an equirectangular projection.
This is the Milky Way of the autumn season in the Northern Hemisphere, on a late September night, from the very dark site of Red Rock Canyon, in Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada. The scene is a 360° panorama taking in the entire sky, taken about 11:00 pm. Illumination is solely by starlight. Being autumn, the larches and aspens are in autumn colours. Snow is on Mount Blakiston at left, while the sharp peak at right is Anderson Peak. The galactic centre is toward the southwest at bottom, though Sagittarius itself had set by the time I shot this panorama. The bright star cloud of Scutum is above the mountains. The Milky Way stretches up through Aquila, through the Summer Triangle stars, with the Cygnus starcloud below centre. At centre is the dark nebula known as the Funnel Nebula. Above it, and above centre, the Milky Way continues through Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and into Perseus. The stars of Auriga and Taurus are just rising in the northeast at top. The Andromeda Galaxy is the fuzzy spot at left of centre. The Pleiades are above the mountains at top left. The dark lanes along the Milky Way are obvious, and with differing densities and opacities. At left is the faint Zodiacal Band, and the brighter diffuse glow of the Gegenschein, in Pisces at this time of year. This glow is always at the point in the sky opposite the Sun, where cometary dust particles reflect sunlight directly back to Earth. To the right the sky is colored red by a dim aurora to the north, and by airglow. My other camera is in the scene, shooting a time-lapse of the Milky Way motion. This is a multi-tier panorama, consisting of 48 segments (!), in 4 tiers of 12 segments each, taken with the iPano motorized panning unit. Each exposure was 30 seconds at f/2 with the 24mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 6400. Stitching was with PTGui, which did it flawlessly. The original image is 12,000 x 12,000 pixels.
