A 360° panorama of the late winter and early spring sky with an arc of aurora, from a latitude of 51° N. This was March 13, 2021, from home in southern Alberta. This night there was a bright aurora across the northern sky, so I have oriented the view to place due north just right of centre. The Big Dipper is at right; Leo is rising at far right. The bright winter stars around Orion are at far left to the south. High clouds and haze, partly lit by light pollution here, add the natural glows to the stars, emphasizing the bright stars and constellation patterns. No filter was used here. The yellow arch at left is a band of cloud illuminated by light pollution. This was a test of new panorama gear, using an Acratech Pan Head on top of a Alyn Wallace/MSM Z-Plate mounted to a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i tracker, to allow taking tracked segments for the panorama, to prevent star trailing. The Z-Plate allowed the Pan Head to mount and move horizontally and vertically in azimuth and altitude despite being on a polar aligned tracker. It worked! The ground is a stitch of 8 segments shot with the tracker motor off, then blended with a stitch of 20 segments for the sky, in 3 tiers of 8 + 6 + 6 segments, all with the Sigma 24mm lens at f/2.8 and for 1-minute with the Nikon D750 at ISO 1600 for all shots. Stitched with PTGui v12 which at last saves camera metadata when exporting PSD files. The original is 25,600 pixels wide.
A quiescent arc of Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, across the northern horizon from home on February 1, 2021. The W of Cassiopeia is at top left; the familiar Big Dipper is at top right. Polaris in the Little Dipper, or Ursa Minor, is above centre. Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper are nicely placed at this time on a February evening flanking Polaris at an equal altitude, in the northwest and in the northeast. The Milky Way runs down the left side of the frame This is a single 30-second untracked exposure with the Sony a7III at ISO 1600, and with the Venus Optics Laowa 15mm lens wide open at f/2.
A 180° panorama of a display of Northern Lights to the northeast, the first in many weeks for us in a Kp4 level display, with bright Mars amid clouds to the southeast, at right. Mars was near opposition and so nearly at its brightest at this time. The Big and Little Dippers are at left to the north; the Pleiades is right of centre to the east. Moonlight from the low gibbous Moon off frame to the southeast provides the illumination. Taken from home, Sept 25-26, 2020, in a stitch of 6 segments, all 20 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 1600 with the Sigma Art 14mm lens and Nikon D750. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.
