The summer Milky Way in the southwest with the planets Jupiter (brightest) and Saturn (centre) to the east, over the Badlands formations at the Trail of the Fossil Hunters site at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. The illumination of the sky and ground is from the rising last quarter Moon off frame to the east at left, adding the warm lighting naturally. Lights from the town of Brooks to the southwest adds the skyglow at right. This is a blend of tracked exposures for the sky and untracked for the ground: 2 x 2-minutes tracked for the sky at f/2.8 and ISO 1600, plus 2 x 5-minutes at f/4 and ISO 800 for the ground, all with the Canon 15-35mm RF lens on the Canon R6 camera, and on the Star Adventurer Mini tracker. Taken August 29, 2021. A mild Orton glow added with Luminar AI and some dodge/burn contrast enhancements brushed onto the foreground with TK Actions Paint Contrast action.
The Summer Triangle stars in the Milky Way through Cygnus, Lyra and Aquila. The frame takes in the Milky Way from Cepheus to Ophiuchus. This is a stack of 4 x 5 minute exposures at f/2.8 with the 24mm lens and modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 800, plus an additional 2 shot with same exposure settings but taken through the Kenko Softon filter for the star glows. Taken from home Sept. 10, 2013. Re-processed February 2020.
A portrait of three comets each passing the Pleiades and in a similar location relative to the star cluster, but taken over a span of 14 years. And I shot the first (Machholz) and latest (Wirtanen) comets with the same lens, a 200mm telephoto, from my backyard in Alberta, while the middle image of Lovejoy I shot with a 135mm telephoto for a wider view than the others, and it was shot from New Mexico. On the left is Comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2) discovered in 2004 by amateur astronomer Don Machholz, at centre is Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) disovered in 2014 by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy from Australia, while on the right is Comet 46P/Wirtanen, discovered in 1948 by professional astronomer Carl Wirtanen. All the comets became bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye, though only just. But all were fine photogenic targets, with Lovejoy sporting the long blue ion tail. I shot Comet Machholz with a Canon Rebel 300D cropped-frame camera, Comet Lovejoy with a full-frame Canon 5D Mark II, and Comet Wirtanen with a Canon 6D MkII full-frame camera. So with the different sensor sizes and the use of two different lenses the images scale is not the same over the three images.
