Venus low in the twilight in an April evening sky, with Orion and the winter stars setting in the west. Venus is between the Hyades and Pleiades. Orion is at left, Auruga is at centre, and Cassiopeia is at right. This was from the Hoodoos on Highway 10 east of Drumheller, Alberta, April 26, 2018. Light from the waxing gibbous Moon provides the illumination, as well as the last of the evening twilight. The ground is a stack of 6 x 15-second exposures to smooth noise while the sky comes from a single 15-second exposure. all at ISO 800 with the Nikon D750 and f/5.6 with the Sigma 14mm Art lens. And no, no amount of healing or cloning could cleanly get rid of the power lines in such a twilght sky. So I left them!
Orion and the stars of winter setting over the downtown core of Calgary, on April 19, 2018. I shot this from Tom Campbell Park, looking west. Venus is the bright object at far right; Sirius is the bright star at far left, with both flanking the skyline. Above is the waxing crescent Moon. The Pleiades is above Venus. This is a stack of 4 x 2-second exposures taken for a time-lapse and star trail set, all with the 24mm Sigma Art lens at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 400. The Moon is from an HDR-blend of shorter exposures so its disk does not overexpose into a bright blob in the thin cloud. It better depicts the scene the way the eye saw it, though in this case the camera is picking out stars better than the eye could with all the foreground lighting and glare. No light pollution filter was employed.
This was a busy sky in the western twilight on April 17, 2018. To the far right: The waxing crescent Moon, with the darkside lit by Earthshine, about 6° south (left) of Venus in the evening twilight and below the Pleaides, with the Aldebaran and the Hyades to the left of the Pleiades. At centre: Orion setting behind the old farm shed. At far left: Sirius setting behind the old farm house, with bright Procyon at upper left. All set in the deep blue twilight. This is a blend of two exposures: a long 13-second exposure for most of the image and a short 2-second exposure for the bright twiilight at right and the Moon, blended with a luminosity mask. To be artistic I added a “Misty Land” Orton-style glow effect with Luminar. And diffraction spikes on the brightest objects with Astronomy Tools actions. Taken from near home in southern Alberta, with a lot of snow only now beginning to melt. I used the Sigma 24mm Art lens at f/2 and Nikon D750 at ISO 800.
