A 360° and horizon-to-zenith panorama of the spring sky over the badlands at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, May 25. 2016. I shot this just before moonrise of the waning gibbous Moon. Mars is the bright object right of centre, then near opposition and at its brightest. Jupiter is low at far right, setting with Leo into the west. Saturn is dimmer and just left of Mars with Mars and Saturn above Antares in Scorpius in the south. The summer Milky Way is rising across the east and into the southeast at left. The Andromeda Galaxy is just above the horizon at left of centre. The Summer Triangle stars are at centre. Arcturus is at upper right, with Spica and the stars of Corvus near the foreground hoodoo. The northern sky at left is brightened with twilight glow, despite this being taken at midnight. At this latitude of 51° north the sky never gets fully dark on late spring and early summer nights. One prominent satellite trail, interrupted by the gap between exposures of the frames it was in, is at left, plus the sky has many others! At this time of year they are well lit by the Sun even at midnight. The horizon is marked by light pollution glows from Calgary (far right) and Brooks (near centre). The display building for the Trail of the Fossil Hunters trail is at far left. This is a stitch of 44 panels, taken in 4 tiers of 11 segments each, shot with the motorized iOptron iPano mount, using its Circular mode. I used the 35mm Canon lens at f/2.8 for 30-second exposures with the Canon 6D at ISO 6400. Developed in Camera Raw, stitched with PTGui, and final processing with Photoshop CC 2015. The original is 32,500 by 8,300 pixels.
The blue glow of summer solstice twilight in the north (at left below the Big Dipper) and the Milky Way arching over Castle Mountain at right, on the Bow Valley Parkway, in Banff National Park, on a very clear moonless night June 4, 2016. The road seems to lead from the Big Dipper to the Milky Way. Despite this being shot after midnight, the sky to the north is still bright with twilight which lasts all night at this latitude near solstice. However, the Milky Way still stands out. In early June the Milky Way arches across the eastern sky and is not yet overhead as it is later in northern summer, making it easier to frame in a pan like this. The Big Dipper at upper left is distorted by the map projection used to create the pan, which stretches the sky across the top near the zenith to fill the rectangular frame, like Greenland being distorted in Mercator maps. Polaris is left of top centre - the Dipper bowl still points to it. This is a panorama stitched and cropped from 28 panels in 4 tiers of 7 panels each, shot with the iPano motorized panning unit. Each exposure was 20 seconds at f/2.5 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 5000. Stitched with PTGui.
Stars wheeling about the North Celestial Pole, and Polaris, in a composite stack of 150 frames shot at pre-dawn July 9, 2014 as part of a time-lapse sequence but here stacked with StarStax with the Comet effect mode. The landscape is from one frame to capture the lighting from the Moon at one instant rather than blurring the lighting over an hour or so of motion. Some low noctilucent clouds are on the northern horizon. Each frame taken with the Canon 5D MkII and 14mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 for 20 seconds at ISO 2000.
