360° Panorama of the Spring Sky

A 360° horizon-to-zenith panorama of the northern spring sky on an early May night (May 10/11, 2016) in the wee hours at about 2 am with the Milky Way rising across the east. A odd, isolated auroral arc glows to the east, adding the green and magenta arc. The green arc over the southern Milky Way may be from airglow. My house is to the right. Cassiopeia and Perseus are at left, Cygnus at left of centre, and Sagittarius at centre low on the horizon. At centre is Mars (brightest) and Saturn above Antares in Scorpius low in the south. At upper right are the spring stars of Arcturus and the Big Dipper, here distorted by the map projection. At lower right is bright Jupiter and Leo, setting into the west. The Gegenschein (a glow from cometary dust directly opposite the Sun) is faintly visible low in the sky right of centre, to the west of Mars, then three weeks before opposition. I shot this from the field next to my rural yard in southern Alberta. Lights from farms and gas plants mar the horizon and brighten the sky to the north and east, while the lights of Strathmore and Calgary light the sky to the west at right. I shot this as a test of the iOptron iPano motorized panning mount. This is a stitch of 44 segments (!), shot in 4 rows or tiers of 11 segments each, with the 35mm lens at f/2 and stock Canon 6D at ISO 4000. All segments developed in Camera Raw, then exported to TIFFs to import into PTGui software. I used the Equirectangular projection to stitch the segments. Final processing of the flattened panorama in Photoshop. The original is 32,500 x 8,100 pixels and 4 Gb.