The summer Milky Way and galactic core region over Upper Waterton Lake and Waterton Townsite on a July evening. This was from the famous viewpoint of the Prince of Wales Hotel, looking south with Sagittarius and the Galactic Centre positioned over the lake. Scorpius is at right with reddish Antares. The M6 and M7 star clusters are low over the lake. The pinkish Lagoon Nebula, M8, is left of centre, with the M24 Small Sagittarius Starcloud above. Some forest fire smoke dampened the contrast and transparency this night. This is a blend of tracked exposures for the sky and untracked exposures for the ground: a stack of 4 x 2-minute tracked at ISO 1600 and f/2.8 for the sky and a stack of 3 x 4-minute untracked at ISO 800 and f/4 for the ground. LENR noise reduction applied in-camera to the ground images to reduce thermal speckling on this warm night. An additional short 30-second exposure at ISO 400 and f/5.6 masked in is for the town lights to subdue their brightness, though the result does better resemble the naked eye view, as the lighting has been reduced and shielded recently to make it much less glaring than before. An additional 2-minute tracked exposure at the end of the sequence taken through a Kase/Alyn Wallace Starglow filter blended in add the star glows! The tracker was the Star Adventurer Mini which worked perfectly and consistently. The camera was the Canon EOS Ra with the 15-35mm RF lens at 24mm.
A 45° panorama of the massive "grand display" of noctilucent clouds at dusk on June 16, 2021 from "One Tree Hill" near home in southern Alberta. This display was bright and extensive at dusk on June 16, and re-appeared over much of the northeastern sky at dawn on June 17. Note the colours — with the NLCs having a reddish tinge at the top where sunlight is reddened as the Sun sets from that altitude and location of the clouds. The lower areas of NLCs often appear green as well. But the main colour of NLCs is electric blue, very much so this night when they were so bright. The sharp dark edge in the clouds at left is real; it is not a stitching artifact. Capella is the brightest star to the right of the lone tree. This is a panorama of 6 segments with the 85mm Samyang lens and Canon R6, stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.
A 90° panorama of the massive "grand display" of noctilucent clouds at dusk on June 16, 2021 from "One Tree Hill" near home in southern Alberta. This display was bright and extensive at dusk on June 16, and re-appeared over much of the northeastern sky at dawn on June 17. This shows the arc of the NLCs, defined at the top by the edge where sunlight is no longer illuminating the clouds, an edge that drops in altitude as the Sun itself drops farther below the horizon. Capella is at centre, Leo and Regulus at far left, and Perseus at right of centre. The main colour of NLCs is electric blue, very much so this night when they were so bright. This is a panorama of 10 segments with the 50mm Sigma lens and Canon R6, stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.
