A 360° panorama taken in the pre-dawn hours (4:45 a.m.) on December 8, 2013, from the Painted Pony Resort in SW New Mexico. The panorama takes in, from left to right: • Arcturus just on the treetop • the zodiacal light rising up from the east • red Mars embedded in the zodiacal light below Leo • the Milky Way from Puppis and Canis Major at left arching up and across the sky down into Perseus at right • Sirius the brightest star • Orion setting over the main house • Jupiter, the bright object at top centre in Gemini • Aldebaran and the Pleiades setting right of the main house in Taurus • Polaris over the smaller house at right • the Big Dipper pointing to Polaris at upper right • a green glow along the northern horizon above the smaller house that may be some aurora (there was a good display this night from northern latitudes) or may be intense airglow. • green and red bands throughout the sky are airglow • bands of high cloud also permeate the sky adding natural glows around the stars. This is a panorama created in PTGui software from 6 segments, all tracked, taken with the 14mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 for 2.5 minutes each and with the Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. PTGui does not preserve EXIF data.
A 360° panorama of the sky and Milky Way as seen from the summit of Mount Kobau near Osoyoos, BC, Canada at the Mt Kobau Star Party, July 28, 2014. This is a stitch with PTGui of 8 segements, 45° apart, each 50 seconds, with the 14mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D at ISO 6400. All on a fixed tripod, no tracking. Light pollution from Osoyoos and Oliver light the sky at left. The centre of the Milky Way is at bottom in Sagittarius, the Big Dipper and Arcturus are at upper right.
How many sources of skyglow can you pick out here? • The Milky Way • Airglow • Light pollution (too much!) • Perpetual northern twilight • Aurora The Milky Way (at left) arches over an old pioneer farmstead from the 1930s and 40s near home in southern Alberta. Mars (very bright and in some clouds) and Saturn shine at lower centre, while Jupiter is the bright object in clouds at right just above the old house. Arcturus is the brightest star here at upper right of centre, made more obvious here by shining through the clouds. The Big Dipper, distorted by the map projection used in the this panorama, is at upper right. Light pollution from Strathmore and Calgary lights the clouds coming in from the west. Green airglow is visible below the Milky Way. Twilight provides the blue to the northern sky at either end. There’s a very slight aurora low in the north but hardly noticeable. This is a 360° horizon to zenith panorama taken with the iPano motorized panning unit, using the 24mm lens at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400, for a stitch of 28 panels, in 4 tiers of 7 segments each. Stitched with PTGui. South is at centre, north to either end. The original is 25,700 x 7,700 pixels.
