The northern summer Milky Way over Middle Waterton Lake at Driftwood Beach in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta on a July night. Sagittarius is at centre, with the pink Lagoon Nebula, M8, right of centre. The Dark Horse complex of dust lanes is over the peak at right. The Scutum Starcloud is at top centre. The bright object at far left is Jupiter, with dimmer Saturn to the right, with both over Vimy Peak and in Capricornus or thereabouts! This is a blend of tracked exposures for the sky and untracked exposures for the ground: a stack of 4 x 2-minute tracked at f/2.8 and ISO 1600 for the sky, blended with a single 8-minute untracked at f/5.6 and ISO 800 for the ground, taken with Long Exposure Noise Reduction on to eliminate most thermal hot pixels this warm night. A tracked 2-minute exposure through an Kase/Alyn Wallace Starglow filter adds the star glow effect. An additional short 30-second exposure at ISO 400 and f/4 is for the lights of the Prince of Wales Hotel and their reflections, to preevent them from overexposing too much which they would in the long ground exposure. Forest fire smoke moving in added some haze and lowered contrast. The sky tracker was the Star Adventurer Mini which worked perfectly. The camera was the Canon ESO Ra and lens the Canon 15-35mm RF at 15mm.
Jupiter (brightest), Saturn (to the left), and the Milky Way over the Saskatchewan River and the area of Howse Pass, on July 26, 2020. Mount Cephren is at left; the scene is framed to include Cephren. The nebulas and star clouds of the galactic centre area at right show up well on this very clear night. The bright Small Sagittarius Starcloud, aka M24, is most obvious, flanked by the star clusters M23 and M25 to the side, and the nebulas M17 and M16 above, and M8 and M20 below. The fuzzy globular cluster M22 is to the left of the large Lagoon Nebula, M8. Green airglow tints the sky. This is an exposure blend of a stack of 4 x 2-minute untracked exposures for the ground at ISO 1600 (exposed long to bring out ground details), with 2 x 1-minute tracked and stacked exposures at ISO 3200 for the sky. Shot from the Howse Pass Viewpoint area off the Icefields Parkway at Saskatchewan River Crossing. The camera was on the iOptron SkyGuider Pro tracker. For the ground shots I simply turned the tracker motor off. All with the 35mm Canon lens at f/2.8 and Canon EOS Ra, a filter-modified camera. Topaz Sharpen AI applied to the ground; Topaz DeNoise AI applied to the sky. In camera LENR employed on all shots on this warm night. An Orton soft glow effect added to the sky with Luminar Flex plug-in.
This is the Milky Way of the autumn season in the Northern Hemisphere, on a late September night, from the very dark site of Red Rock Canyon, in Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada. The scene is a 360° panorama taking in the entire sky, taken about 11:00 pm. Illumination is solely by starlight. Being autumn, the larches and aspens are in autumn colours. Snow is on Mount Blakiston at left, while the sharp peak at right is Anderson Peak. The galactic centre is toward the southwest at bottom, though Sagittarius itself had set by the time I shot this panorama. The bright star cloud of Scutum is above the mountains. The Milky Way stretches up through Aquila, through the Summer Triangle stars, with the Cygnus starcloud below centre. At centre is the dark nebula known as the Funnel Nebula. Above it, and above centre, the Milky Way continues through Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and into Perseus. The stars of Auriga and Taurus are just rising in the northeast at top. The Andromeda Galaxy is the fuzzy spot at left of centre. The Pleiades are above the mountains at top left. The dark lanes along the Milky Way are obvious, and with differing densities and opacities. At left is the faint Zodiacal Band, and the brighter diffuse glow of the Gegenschein, in Pisces at this time of year. This glow is always at the point in the sky opposite the Sun, where cometary dust particles reflect sunlight directly back to Earth. To the right the sky is colored red by a dim aurora to the north, and by airglow. My other camera is in the scene, shooting a time-lapse of the Milky Way motion. This is a multi-tier panorama, consisting of 48 segments (!), in 4 tiers of 12 segments each, taken with the iPano motorized panning unit. Each exposure was 30 seconds at f/2 with the 24mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 6400. Stitching was with PTGui, which did it flawlessly. The original image is 12,000 x 12,000 pixels.
