The Big Dipper and a diffuse aurora over the old barn near home, in southern Alberta, on September 16, 2016. The waning gibbous Moon off camera at right provides the illumination. This is a stack of 4 exposures, averaged, for the ground to smooth noise and one exposure for the sky to keep the stars untrailed. All 13 seconds at f/2.8 with the Sigma 20mm lens, and ISO 1600 with the Nikon D750. Diffraction spikes on stars added with Noel Carboni’s Astronomy Tools actions.
A faint aurora glowing over the harvest in progress this night, with trucks and combines lighting the field at left, and the Harvest Moon itself - actually three days after Full Moon - lighting the scene at right. The combination of lighting from manmade and natural sources makes for an interesting illumination on the grain bins. The Big Dipper is left of centre, pointing down to Arcturus at far left, and Perseus is at right. The Pleiades are just rising over the far right bins. This is a 7-segment panorama, with the 20mm lens and Nikon D750. Stitched in ACR.
The 2016 Perseid meteor shower, in a view looking north to the Big Dipper and with the radiant point in Perseus at upper right, the point where the meteors appear to be streaking from. I shot this on the peak night of the shower, August 11/12 after moonset so the sky was dark and in fact filled with bright airglow, appearing here as bands of green and yellow, mixed with a low-level aurora to the north as well. While it looks like the sky has artificial light pollution, the glows here are natural, from aurora and airglow. The Big Dipper is at bottom, pointing up to Polaris and the Little Dipper at upper centre. Perseus is at far upper right. This was from the Dark Sky Preserve of Grasslands National Park in southern Saskatchewan, from the trailhead parking lot of the 70 Mile Butte Road. This is a stack of 10 frames, shot over one hour from 1:38 a.m. to 2:37 a.m. CST. The camera was on the Star Adventurer tracker so all the sky frames aligned. The ground is from a stack of four frames, mean combined to smooth noise, and taken with the tracker motor off to minimize ground blurring, and taken at the start of the sequence. All exposures 40 seconds at f/3.2 with the 16-35mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 6400.
