Star trails showing Orion and Taurus rising behind the rock formations of City of Rocks State Park, New Mexico. I shot this Monday, Dec 29, 2014. The colours of the stars and trails have been boosted in vibrancy to show the colour differences better. Red Betelgeuse is at left, while the pinkish Orion Nebula is at centre. The cyan trail at right is Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2). Light from the waxing quarter Moon illuminates the foreground. A satellite streak is at right of centre. This is a stack of 260 exposures, each 30 seconds at f/2/8 with the 24mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 400. The foreground is mostly from one frame, the first frame, to preserve shadows. I also added larger star glows around the brighter stars of Orion to make the constellation patern more obvious. It starts just above the rocks at lower left and rises to above centre. The images were stacked with the Advanced Stacker Actions from Star Circle Academy, using the Elastic Stars effect to add point-like stars from the first and last frames.
Orion over Mt. Athabasca (left) and Mt. Andromeda (right) at the Columbia Icefields, Jasper National Park, on the morning of Sept 13, 2014 in bright moonlight from the waning gibbous Moon off frame at upper right, and from brightening morning twilight. Though hard to see, there are a couple of spots of light on the glacier on Mt. Athabasca at left from headlamps from climbers ascending before dawn. I was able to watch their lights moving up the mountain while I was doing this pre-dawn shoot. This is a single 10 second exposure at f/2.5 with the Canon 24mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 800.
The northern winter constellations setting in the west and the Zodiacal Light in the western evening sky, shot from Chiricahua National Monument, at Massai Point, 6800 feet, in southeastern Arizona, April 29, 2014. Orion is setting at left of centre, and Sirius is at the left edge. The Pleiades are just going down behind the ridge at right, while Aldebaran and the Hyades sit amid the spring evening Zodiacal Light. I shot this as part of a 300-frame day-to-night time-lapse sequence using the Canon 6D and 24mm lens. This is a 30-second exposure at f/4 and ISO 3200.
