In 1873 explorer and pioneer William Butler travelling across the then unsettled Canadian Prairies wrote, “No solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie.” This is the Milky Way and night sky on a perfectly clear night, July 25, 2017, on the Canadian Prairies at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in Alberta, near the border looking south to the Sweetgrass Hills (West Butte) of Montana. The Milk River, which flows into the Missouri River, winds below. The site is sacred to the Blackoot First Nations. The wooden buildings below are replicas of the late 1800s North West Mounted Police outpost in Police Coulee. Sagittarius and Scorpius are on the southern horizon, and Saturn is the bright object in the Dark Horse right of centre. The galactic centre is amid the bright star clouds above the horizon. The sky at left is green with natural airglow. The ground is illuminated only by starlight and airglow. This is a composite of a stack of 8 untracked exposures for the ground (mean combined to smooth noise) and 4 tracked exposures for the sky taken immediately afterwards, and again mean combined to smooth noise. All are 2 minutes at f/2 with the 20mm Sigma Art lens, and Nikon D750 at ISO 1600. The tracker was the Star Adventurer Mini.
A multiple exposure composite showing the arc of the Full Moon of July 9/10, 2017 low across the southern sky on a summer night from dusk to dawn. This illustrates the low arc of the Moon across the sky in northern summer, from southeast at left to southwest at right. The sky is a blend of three long exposures: • for the dusk 10 p.m. sky (left) with crepuscular rays in the clear twilight, • the 2 a.m. middle-of-the-night sky with the Moon nearly due south (middle) with stars and iridescent colours around the Moon in light cloud, • and the dawn 5 a.m. sky (right) with increasing clouds hiding the Moon. The Moon disks come from a series of short 1/15-second exposures, to record just the disks of the bright Moon. I took shots every minute but selected images taken at 10-minute intervals here for the composite. Taken from home on a warm and dry summer night with no dew! Stacked and blended in Photoshop, with Lighten blend modes and gradient masks. Shot with a 15mm full-frame fish-eye lens and Canon 6D.
The “river of stars” – the Milky Way – arching over the scenic bend of the Red Deer River, Alberta, from the Orkney Viewpoint overlooking the Badlands and river valley, in a 270° panorama. To the north at left, a weak aurora shines along the horizon. Bands of airglow also colour the sky to the east at centre, and perpetual twilight lights the sky at far left. To the south at right, the Milky Way becomes lost amid the light pollution from Drumheller, Alberta, made more obvious by some clouds drifting through. So this is a study in skyglows: aurora, twilight, airglow, Milky Way and urban skyglow, and of the contrast between the natural sky and light polluted sky. And of course, I like the way the curve of the Milky Way is mirrored in the curve of the river, which is why I picked this spot and this night in spring, when the Milky Way is still arching across the east and not overhead as it is later in summer. The most prominent stars reflected in the still waters of the rive are the stars of Delphinus the Dolphin, but there are no dolphins in this river! Only ones made of stars. This is a stitch of 8 segments with the Sigma 20mm Art lens, in portrait mode, and Nikon D750. Each 30 seconds at f/2 and ISO 3200. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw. Taken on a mild and moonless night, May 20, 2017.
