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.
A 360° panorama of the Milky Way and night sky taken at Cameron Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada. I shot this Sept 21, 2014 on a very clear night with no noticeable aurora and very little airglow. The ground is lit solely by starlight. The lake was very calm and reflects the southern Milky Way. 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 4000. I used PTGui to stitch the segments, with this version being an equirectangular projection.
The Milky Way, often described in mythologies as a river in the sky, shines over the Bow River in Banff National Park on a very clear night in early June. The viewpoint is the famous Morant’s Curve on the Bow Valley Parkway, overlooking the Bow, the CPR rail line following the river, and the peaks of the Continental Divide, including Mt. Temple at right near Lake Louise. The location is named for Nicolas Morant who photographed trains in the Rockies using large format cameras from here when under the employ of the CPR. Mars is the bright object at centre, west of Scorpius with Antares and Saturn, then to the east, the star clouds of the galactic centre region of the Milky Way above the southern horizon, in Sagittarius. The Milky Way extends up into Scutum, Serpens, and Aquila. The sky is not black but a deep blue from the perpetual twilight in the sky in early June (this was June 4, 2016) at this latitude. Some green airglow also discolours the sky. Several satellite trails are in the sky as well. This is a stitch of 9 panels to form a partial panorama, looking south and west, each exposure being 20 seconds at f/2.5 with the 24mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 5000. Shot with the iPano panning unit and stitched with PTGui.
