Venus (bright at top) and Mercury (faint and low in the twilight) with both planets about as high as they will get this spring at my latitude of 51° N in Alberta. Mercury’s date of greatest elongation is May 6. I shot this May 2, 2015 from the bridge over the Red Deer River near Dorothy, Alberta. Light from the nearly Full Moon rising in the east behind me provides some of the landscape illumination. This is a high dynamic range stack of 5 exposures at 1-stop intervals, using the Canon 6D and 35mm lens.
The Milky Way over Lake Annette in Jasper National Park, Alberta, a Dark Sky Preserve. I shot this at the Lake Annette Star Party, one of the Dark Sky Festival events, using the Canon 60Da and 10-22mm lens at 10mm f/4 and ISO 3200 for 1 minute, untracked. Shot October 24, 2014 with fresh snow on Whistler across the lake and valley and on a calm night with still waters reflecting the stars. A photographer participating in the photo workshop is shooting back toward the star party.
The eclipsed Moon, October 8, 2014, over the Milk River and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in Alberta, with the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana to the south at left. The Moon was in total eclipse when I took this, and shines at right as a bright red glow. Lights from Coutts and towns in Montana light the clouds on the horizon. Orion and the winter stars stand at left, with Sirius at far left and Aldebaran and the Pleiades at top centre. The buildings in the valley below are the old NWMP outpost buildings from the late 1800s. The night was partly cloudy and hazy, thus the glows around stars and the Moon. This is a 1-minute exposure at f/2.8 with the 14mm Rokinon lens and Canon 6D at ISO 6400. The ground however is from a stack of 5 x 1 minute exposures to smooth noise.
