The galactic centre region of the Milky Way in Sagittarius and Scorpius, over the upper field of the Texas Star Party, near Fort Davis, Texas, May 13, 2015. About 600 people gather here each spring for a star party under very dark skies near the MacDonald Observatory. Sagittarius is left of centre and Scorpius is right of centre with the planet Saturn the bright object at the top edge right of centre. The dark lanes of the Dark Horse and Pipe Nebula areas lead from the Milky Way to the stars of Scorpius, including Antares. The semi-circular Corona Australis is just clearing the hilltop at left of centre. This is a composite of 5 x 3 minute exposures with the camera tracking the sky for more detail in the Milky Way without trailing. Each tracked exposure was at ISO 1600. The ground comes from 3 x 1.5-minute exposures at ISO 3200 taken immediately after the tracked exposures but with the drive turned off on the tracker. All are with the 24mm lens at f/2.8 and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII camera. The ground and sky layers were stacked and layered in Photoshop. The tracker was the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer. High haze added the natural glows around the stars — no filter was employed here.
Circumpolar star trails spinning behind Double Arch at Arches National Park, Utah, as the waning gibbous Moon lights the arches toward the end of the sequence. The Big Dipper is streakng into frame at top right from behind the butte at right, while Jupiter is the bright object at top left streaking down into the scene. During the shoot, other photographers were lighting the Arches but this did not affect my shoot, as my foreground came from near the end of the shoot after they had all left and I had natural illumination to light the Arches. This is a stack of 160 frames taken over 2.5 hours from 9:30 to midnight, starting in moonless darkness, then brightening as the Moon rose in the last hour of the shooting, lighting the sky and arches. The nearest arch casts its shadow onto the distant arch, with its shadow shape matching the other arch. The frames were stacked with Star Circle Academy’s “Advanced Stacker Actions” for Photoshop using the Long Streaks effect. The foreground comes from a stack of 8 frames for noise reduction, taken toward the end of the shooting with the moonlight illumination. An additional frame taken a couple of minutes after the last star trail frame adds the short unstreaked stars at the head of the trails. Each exposure was 45 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 3200 with the Canon 6D and 14mm Rokinon lens. Dark frames taken at the end of the night (8 stacked in Mean combine for a master dark) were also subtracted from each of the foreground and star trail stacks, which reduced noise speckling.
The Big Dipper over Double Arch in the moonlight, at Arches National Park, Utah, on April 6, 2015 with illumination from a waning gibbous Moon. This is a two-panel vertical panorama with the 24mm lens and Canon 6D, each panel a stack of 4 x 40-second exposures at f/4 and ISO 1600 to reduce noise in the landscape and shadows, but the sky coming from just one frame in each panel to keep the stars as points. Stitched in Photoshop with reposition command.
