The Northern Lights beginning a display on Friday, Feb 13, from Churchill, Manitoba, on the east deck of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. The official activity level index was near 0 at this time but we still had a marvelous display due to our location directly under the auroral oval. This displayed eventually filled much of the sky. The Big Dipper is at top left. This is a single 15-second exposure at ISO 3200 and f/2.2 with the Canon 24mm lens and Canon 6D.
Circumpolar star trails over the moonlit Mimbres Valley near Lake Roberts in the Gila National Forest, in southern New Mexico. Illumination is from the waxing gibbous Moon. Polaris is at upper left, while the stars of the Big Dipper are rising at right, with just the Bowl’s Pointer stars visible at the start of the sequence, then rising to bring the entire Dipper above the horizon, with Alkaid, the end star of the handle, just clearing the ridge at right. (I had to wait till 10 pm for the star to appear so the entire Dipper would be in the final frames.) The sequence was shot over 3 hours. This is a stack of 340 frames, each 32 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 800 with the 24mm lens and Canon 6D. The ground comes from a final 2 minute exposure at f/8 for greater depth of field in the foreground. Stacked with Star Circle Academy’s Advanced Stacker Actions using the Elastic Stars effect. I used LRTimelapse to also vary the color balance over the sequence as the illumination shifted and clouds changed the sky colour. This will be more noticeable when the frames are exported into a time-lapse movie.
This is a moonlit nightscape of the historic Hearst Church in Pinos Altos, New Mexico, at 7000 feet altitude (thus the name “High Pines”) and on the Continental Divide. In the sky above, the Big Dipper is at right, and Polaris is at left over the church. The Hearst Church opened in May 1898, built with money raised by the local mining families in Pinos Altos, and with a donation from Phoebe Hearst, wife of the mining mogul in the area and senator George Hearst, parents of newspaper tychoon William Randolph Hearst. Gold from the Pinos Altos Hearst mines decorates the Hearst Castle in California. The Hearst Church now serves as an art gallery for the Grant County Art Guild. See http://gcag.org for information. This is a single 45-second exposure at f/2.8 with the 24mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 800. Power lines and poles were cloned out. Taken January 27, 2015 under the light of a first quarter Moon in hazy skies. Warm light from decorative lights in the yard of the house across the street added the reddish glow to the adobe brick. Very nice. Subtle star diffraction spikes added with Astronomy Tools actions.
