The Big Dipper, with its handle pointing to Arcturus at left, on a moonlit autumn evening, over the Waterton River at the Maskinonge picnic area at Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta. I shot this September 20, 2015, before clouds and eventually rain moved in. Illumination is from a First Quarter Moon. This is a single 20-second exposure at f/2.8 and ISO 1600 with the Nijon D750 and Sigma 24mm lens, untracked on a tripod. The night was very windy, thus the blurred grass and bushes.
The Big Dipper and Ursa Major over the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, on Sept 11, 2015 taken on a night of aurora shooting. The scene is lit by aurora and starlight. An arc of aurora is on the horizon while wispy bands of airglow are visible above the aurora. The sky is a single untracked exposure of 30 seconds at f/2 with the Sigma 24mm lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200, while the ground is a Mean Combine stack of 5 similar exposures to smooth noise.
The last of an all-sky aurora fades into the encroaching dawn, as Orion (at right) and the winter stars rise into an August morning. The Pleiades and the stars of Taurus are at upper right. The Big Dipper is at lower left. Polaris is at upper left. Gemini is low at the end of the auroral curtain at right, while Procyon is just rising below, in a “heliacal rising” jiust before the dawn. I shot this from home at 5 am but just a little too late to catch the display at its best over most of the sky. This is a single 10-second exposure at f/2.8 with the 15mm lens at Canon 6D at ISO 1600, shot from home in southern Alberta.
