Mars, the bright “star” at left in Scorpius, rising opposite the Sun and the sunset sky, near the date of its 2016 opposition. Opposition was May 22; I shot this May 25, on the first available clear night! The 270° panorama illustrates how a planet at opposition (when it is closest to Earth) appears opposite the Sun in the sky, rising in the east as the Sun sets in the west. (Or in this case, rising in the southeast as the Sun set in the northwest.) Saturn, then a couple of weeks before its opposition date, is also rising just above the horizon to the left of Mars. Mars was in the head of Scorpius. For this scene, I waited until well after sunset to get the sky darker and more stars appearing in the deepening twilight, though the sky to the northwest was still bright with sunset colours in the long 8-second exposures I used for each of the frames here. This is a stitch in Adobe Camera Raw of 9 segments, each with the Canon 35mm lens at f/5.6 and Canon 6D at ISO 800. I shot using the iPano panorama unit though this was just a single tier horizon pan hardly needing a motorized unit to shoot. Each frame is a single exposure — this is not an HDR pano.
Sunrise looking south from Smoky Cape Lighthouse with the Sun lighting the hills of Hat Head National Park, NSW, Australia. This is an HDR stack of 5 exposures to compress the dynamic range in brightness from the sky to the ground. All with the 14mm Rokinon lens and Canon 6D. Stacked and tone-mapped in Adobe Camera Raw.
