The Winter Sky in 360°

A 360° fish-eye scene of the winter sky from home in southern Alberta, with Orion rising into the southeast at bottom, and Venus bright as an evening “star” in the west at right. The Big Dipper is low in the northeast at upper left. The Milky Way runs across the sky from northwest where summer stars are setting to the southeast where the winter stars are rising. Sirius is just rising behind the distant trees at lower left. Overhead are the autumn constellations of Cassiopeia. Andromeda, and Perseus. Below centre is the Pleiades and stars of Taurus. Some faint Zodiacal light is visible at right in the southwest, near Venus but competes with the haze and lights from towns to the west. This is a stitch of 6 segments taken with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye lens, landscape orientation, and Nikon D750, in a test of the lens’s ability to shoot horizon to zenith pans in this mode. At f/2.8 and ISO 3200 for 25 seconds each, untracked. Stitched with PTGui. The original is 8300 pixels wide.