This is a portrait of the winter sky rising in the southeast on January 9, 2021, taken from home in Alberta. The constellation of Orion is at centre with blue-white Sirius in Canis Major below and reddish-yellow Aldebaran in Taurus above. Castor and Pollux in Gemini are at left. Procyon in Canis Minor is between the Castor-Pollux pair and Sirius. Bright star clusters flank the scene, with the Pleiades (M45) at top and the Beehive Cluster (M44) in Cancer at far left. Several other smaller star clusters in and along the Milky Way are also visible, even at this scale with an ultra-wide lens. This is a stack of 10 30-second tracked exposures with the 15mm Venus Optics Laowa lens at f/4 on the Sony a7III at ISO 6400. and taken as part of lens testing this night.
Orion and the winter stars and constellations rising in the light of a first quarter Moon on December 2, 2019. This was from home in Alberta. Orion is above the trees with Aldebaran in Taurus and the Pleiades above him. At top left is the star Capella and the constellation of Auriga. At left of centre are Castor and Pollux in Gemini. Just rising amid the trees is Procyon in Canis Minor. Sirius and Canis Major had not yet risen. The timing nicely captures 4 of the sky’s best star clusters in a row across the sky, with the Beehive just rising at lower left, the Hyades at upper right, and the Pleiades at top. Between the Hyades and the Beehive is the small binocular cluster in Gemini, M35, but visible in this wide-angle view. The low setting Moon behind the camera to the right added a warm “bronze hour” tint to the landscape. Tracks in the snow are from deer. This is a blend of untracked exposures for the ground and tracked exposures for the sky, using the Star Adventurer tracker. The ground and sky are each stacks of 4 x 1.5-minute exposures with the 15-35mm Canon RF lens at 15mm and f/2.8 and on the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800. I had some fun with filters on this one, applying a Soft Glow filter with Luminar Flex to the ground and an Orton Glow effect to the sky with ON1 Photo RAW 2020.
