The constellation of Draco the Dragon winding between the Big (left) and Little (bottom) Dippers. Polaris is at bottom. centre The head of Draco is at top right. This is a stack of 4 x 1-minute exposures with the 24mm Sigma lens at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 1600, plus an additional 1 min exposure through the Kenko Softon filter to add the star glows. All tracked on the MSM SiFo Tracker from China. Taken from home July 24, 2019. Gradient Xterminator, along with gradient filters in ACR, did a good job eliminating sky gradients as the Big Dipper was low in the northwest toward light pollution. Taken in summer but I turned this 90° for a horizontal orientation that is more like a spring sky setting, with the Big Dipper above the Pole.
The constellation of Ursa Major, with the Big Dipper or Plough, photographed in deep twilight on May 27, 2019 from home. I shot this before the sky gat completely dark but before this area of sky got too low in the northwest. At bottom are the line of paired stars called The Three Leaps of the Gazelle. This is a stack of 3 x 1-minute tracked exposures with the 35mm lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 800, plus a similar exposure blended in but taken through the Kenko Softon diffusion filter to add the star glows. GradientXterminator filter applied to even out twilight gradients.
The northern spring constellation of Ursa Major framed to include the three pairs of stars at bottom that mark his paws and that are also known as the “Three Leaps of the Gazelle” from Arabic star lore. This asterism is very prominent to the naked eye as a series of similarly paired double stars across the sky, high overhead in spring. The Big Dipper asterism is at top, aka the Plough or Saucepan, or Wagon. I framed this to also include the Coma Berenices star cluster, Mel 111, at lower left. This is a stack of 6 x 1-minute exposures with the Canon 35mm L-series lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 800, plus two similar exposures with the Kenko Softon A filter to add the star glows, with those exposures blended in with a Lighten mode. Taken from home on the Mach 1 mount April 29, 2019.
