The trio of Messier galaxies, M98, M99, and M100 near the star 6 Comae Berenices along with fainter NGC galaxies. The face-on spiral M100 is at top right; the edge-on spiral M98 is at lower right; the face-on spiral M99, the Coma Pinwheel, is at bottom. The pair of galaxies to the left of M99 is NGC 4298 and NGC 4302. This is a stack of 7 x 5-minute exposures with the SharpStar HNT150 Hyperbolic Newtonian astrograph at f/2.8 and Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800.
The Milky Way, with the starclouds of the galactic core in Sagittarius at left and the head of Scorpius at right, over a still ice-covered Cameron Lake, a high altitude alpine lake in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada. This was on a very clear night on June 2, 2021. The Lagoon Nebula, M8, and M24 Small Sagittarius Starcloud are prominent at left. Antares and the Rho Ophiuchi dark lanes are at right just over the mountain ridge, with the tracked shots timed to catch Antares before it set behind the peak. The Galactic "Dark Horse" is at centre, with this area of sky about as high as it would get for the night — this is right on the Canada-US border at 49° N. The landscape is lit only by starlight and residual airglow. Cameron Lake is in the extreme southwest corner of Alberta and is certainly one of the darkest places in Canada. Waterton Lakes is a Dark Sky Preserve. The slope at left is scarred from the 2017 Kenow Fire. This is a blend of tracked and untracked exposures: a stack of 2 x 8-minute untracked shots at ISO 400 for the ground, and a stack of 4 x 2-minute tracked shots at ISO 1600 for the sky. All were with the 35mm Canon L-series EF lens at f/2.8 and Canon Ra camera. The tracker was the little MSM Move-Shoot-Move Rotator, polar aligned with the laser. The ground shots were taken immediately after the tracked sky shots. Stacked, masked and blended in Photoshop.
A 270° nightscape panorama of the Milky Way from Carina (at right) to Scutum (at left) arching over the paddock next to the Tibuc Gardens Cottage near Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia, on April 12, 2016. The Dark Emu is visible in its entirety, from the head in Crux at right to his feet in Scutum at left. Scorpius with Mars and Saturn are at top left. Some green airglow tints the horizon. The ground is illuminated only by starlight. This is a stitch of 6 panels, each 2.5-minute exposures, all tracked on the iOptron Sky Tracker, with the 15mm full-frame fish eye lens (in portrait orientation) at f/2.8 and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 3200. The sky is not trailed but the tracking has blurred the ground slightly. Stitched in PTGui software with fish-eye projection.
