A 360° panorama of the spring sky over the Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, on March 29, 2019, with the winter Milky Way and constellations setting at centre, and the spring constellations filling the sky at left and right. At centre is also the tapering pyramid-shaped glow of the Zodiacal Light, which continues to the left across the sky as the Zodiacal Band and brightening at far right above the horizon as the Gegenschein. Urban sky glows from Brooks and Calgary mar the horizon with white and yellow glows. Mars is just below the Pleiades at centre in the Zodiacal Light. The panoroma projection stretches out the sky at top near the zenith, so the Big Dipper at right. is distorted. This is a panorama of 12 segments taken with the 14mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 in portrait orientation, all for 30 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 4000. Taken at 30° spacings. Stitched with PTGui. I added a mild Orton glow effect with Luminar 3 plugin.
A 360° by 180° panorama of the northern spring sky taken from home on a very clear night April 20, 2020. This is the sky with as little Milky Way as is possible from my latitude. North is at top, south at bottom; west is to the right, east to the left. The North Pole of the Milky Way is just below centre here, near the large Coma Berenices star cluster. I shot this as a demonstration of the view looking up out of the plane of the Milky Way toward its galactic pole and the realm of the galaxies in the spring sky. As a result of the orientation of the Earth at this time of year, the Milky Way is as low as it gets from my latitude of 51° North and appears here as a low arc across the northern horizon at top. From a latitude farther south about 35° N, the Milky Way would run along the horizon and the galactic pole would be at the zenith. To the south at bottom the faint glow of Gegenschein is visible in Virgo around the star Spica. There is the suggestion of the even fainter Zodiacal Band stretching across the south over to the western sky at right brightened by light pollution and with a few annoying clouds over the urban areas to the west. Gemini, Cancer and Leo are at right; Auriga and Perseus are at top right. Arcturus is the bright star left of centre, Vega is the bright star at top left, rising. The Big Dipper and Ursa Major are overhead at the zenith. Polaris is above centre due north. This is a stitch of 8 segments each untracked for 30 seconds at f/2.8 with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye lens in portrait orientation, and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200. I used LENR in-camera dark frame subtraction to reduce shadow noise and discolouration. — images shot without LENR had a lot of magenta cast in the shadows. Stitched with PTGui and assembled with the spherical projection. Topaz DeNoise AI applied to the ground, Noiseless CK from SkyLum/Luminar applied to the sky.
A 360° panorama of the northern spring sky taken from home on a very clear night April 20, 2020. The Milky Way is as low as it gets from my latitude of 51° North and appears here as a low arc across the northern horizon at right. To the south at left the faint glow of Gegenschein is visible in Virgo around the star Spica. There is the suggestion of the even fainter Zodiacal Band stretching across the south over to the western sky at centre brightened by light pollution and with a few annoying clouds over the urban areas to the west. Gemini, Cancer and Leo are at centre; Auriga and Perseus are right of centre. Arcturus is the bright star at upper left, Vega is the bright star at far right. This is a stitch of 8 segments each untracked for 30 seconds at f/2.8 with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye lens in portrait orientation, and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200. I used LENR in-camera dark frame subtraction to reduce shadow noise and discolouration. — images shot without LENR had a lot of magenta cast in the shadows. Stitched with PTGui and assembled with the equirectangular projection. Topaz DeNoise AI applied to the ground, Noiseless CK from SkyLum/Luminar applied to the sky.
