The summer Milky Way and galactic centre area to the south over the Milk River in Alberta and the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana, from the viewpoint road at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, Alberta, on New Moon night, August 1, 2016. Sagittarius and the Dark Horse of dust lanes in Ophiuchus and Serpens is above the southern horizon, as are the star clusters M6 and M7 in Scorpius. Mars and Saturn are at right, with Saturn above Antares. This is a stack of 10 images, average mean combined, for the ground to smooth noise, and a single untracked exposure for the sky. All are 30 seconds at f/2 with the 20mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 4000. These frames were from the beginning of a motion control panning sequence for a time-lapse movie, with the Syrp Genie Mini, but in the initial frames before the Genie began to move.
The summer Milky Way over the sandstone formations at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta, on a dark of the Moon night, July 31, 2016. The foreground is iluminated only by starlight. No artificial light painting was employed here. The Lagoon Nebula and objects in Sagittarius and Scutum are to the south here at centre. This is a composite of a single untracked exposure for the sky, and a mean-combine average stack of 10 exposures for the ground (to smooth noise), all 30-second exposures at f/2 with the 20mm Sigma Art lens at f/2 and Nikon D750 at ISO 4000. They were shot at the end of a motion-control sequence for a time-lapse movie, shot with the Syrp Genie Mini. These frames are from the end of the sequence when the camera had ramped to a stop. Some airglow and light pollution discolour the sky.
The Milky Way over the sandstone hoodoos of Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta. This is a comppsite of a single 30-second untracked exposure for the sky with the Canon 6D at ISO 4000, and 24mm lens at f/2, as the final frame of a 300-frame time-lapse, with a 6.5-minute exposure for the ground, taken at the end of the time-lapse with the lens stopped down to f/4 and the Canon at ISO 1600 for lower noise and better depth of field. This final frame of the star trail time-lapse at Writing-on-Stone is made to crossfade to from the movie. Two versions of the ground are in the layered PSD file for demo purposes — 1) from a stack of the last 10 frames and 2) from a single 6.5 minute exposure with an LENR dark frame but the camera shifted a little so that image had to be manually aligned.