A 360° by 180° panorama of the northern spring sky taken from home on a very clear night April 20, 2020. This is the sky with as little Milky Way as is possible from my latitude. North is at top, south at bottom; west is to the right, east to the left. The North Pole of the Milky Way is just below centre here, near the large Coma Berenices star cluster. I shot this as a demonstration of the view looking up out of the plane of the Milky Way toward its galactic pole and the realm of the galaxies in the spring sky. As a result of the orientation of the Earth at this time of year, the Milky Way is as low as it gets from my latitude of 51° North and appears here as a low arc across the northern horizon at top. From a latitude farther south about 35° N, the Milky Way would run along the horizon and the galactic pole would be at the zenith. To the south at bottom the faint glow of Gegenschein is visible in Virgo around the star Spica. There is the suggestion of the even fainter Zodiacal Band stretching across the south over to the western sky at right brightened by light pollution and with a few annoying clouds over the urban areas to the west. Gemini, Cancer and Leo are at right; Auriga and Perseus are at top right. Arcturus is the bright star left of centre, Vega is the bright star at top left, rising. The Big Dipper and Ursa Major are overhead at the zenith. Polaris is above centre due north. This is a stitch of 8 segments each untracked for 30 seconds at f/2.8 with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye lens in portrait orientation, and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200. I used LENR in-camera dark frame subtraction to reduce shadow noise and discolouration. — images shot without LENR had a lot of magenta cast in the shadows. Stitched with PTGui and assembled with the spherical projection. Topaz DeNoise AI applied to the ground, Noiseless CK from SkyLum/Luminar applied to the 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.
Panorama of northern spring sky, taken from home at latitude of +51* N, April 10, 2004. Taken with 35mm full-frame fish-eye lens on Pentax 6x7 camera, at f/5, Fujichrome 400F slide film, and 35 minute exposure. Glow layer added to emphasize bright stars. Jupiter is brghtest object, in Leo at centre right.
