Mars at its brightest in 15 years, at opposition in 2018, shining over the grand old barn near home amid a field of canola. Illumination is from the waning gibbous Moon off camera to the left. This is a stack of 6 exposures, mean combined for the ground, to smooth noise, and one exposure for the sky, all 13 seconds at f/4 with the Canon 35mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 800. An Orton style glow effect was added to the sky, and a Luminar “Abandoned Places” filter added to the ground. Diffraction spikes on Mars added with Astronomy Tools action set. LENR applied in camera for hot pixel reduction.
The view looking south at Herbert Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, with the Milky Way over Mount Temple and the peaks of the Continental Divide. Mars (left in clouds) and Jupiter (right) flank the Milky Way, while Saturn sits within the Milky Way. A couple of satellites and possibly a meteor (it could be a flaring satellite) punctuate the sky as well. The sky is blue with the last vestiges of twilight and from moonlight from the setting waxing Moon off frame at right. This is a four exposures for the ground mean combined to smooth noise, and one exposure for the sky and reflections, all 30 seconds with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 3200.
A blend of images to show the stars of the southern sky moving from east to west (left to right) over the peaks of the Continental Divide at Herbert Lake near Lake Louise, in Banff, Alberta. The main peak at left is Mount Temple. A single static image shows the Milky Way and stars at the end of the motion sequence. The star trails and Milky Way reflect in the calm waters of the small Lake Herbert this night on July 17, 2018. This is a stack of 100 images for the star trails, stacked with the Long Streak function of Advanced Stacker Plus actions, plus a single exposure taken a minute or so after the last star trail image. The star trail stack is dropped back a lot in brightness, plus they are blurred slightly, so as to not overwhelm the fixed sky image. The sky images are blended with a stack of 8 images for the ground, mean combined to smooth noise in the ground. All are 30 seconds at f/2.8 with the 24mm Sigma lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200. All were taken as part of a time-lapse sequence. Clouds moving in added the odd dark patches in the Milky Way that look like out of place dark nebulas. The reflected star trails are really there in the water and have not be copied, pasted and inverted from the sky image. They look irregular because of rippling in the water.
