The Milky Way arching over the scenic bend of the Red Deer River, Alberta, from the Orkney Viewpoint overlooking the Badlands and river valley, in a 300° panorama. To the north at left, a weak aurora shines along the horizon. Bands of airglow also colour the sky to the east at centre. To the south at right of centre, the Milky Way becomes lost amid the light pollution from Drumheller, Alberta, made more obvious by some clouds drifting through. One of my cameras is at right, shooting a time-lapse sequence. A bright Iridium satellite flare is at right, caught one of the panorama frames. Jupiter is at far right. And of course, I like the way the curve of the Milky Way is mirrored in the curve of the river, which is why I picked this spot and this night in spring, when the Milky Way is still arching across the east and not overhead as it is later in summer. This is a stitch of 6 segments with the Rokinon 12mm lens, in landscape mode, and Nikon D750. Each 45 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 3200. Stitched with PTGui. Taken on a mild and moonless night, May 20, 2017.
This is a panorama of the evening sky on March 25, 2020, with brilliant Venus high in the west at centre just after the date (March 24) of its greatest elongation in the evening sky for 2020. It appears here about as high as it can get with the ecliptic tipped up to a high angle in spring. To the left is Orion and the winter stars in the twilight, including Sirius at far left. Just above the horizon right of centre in the bright twilight is the day-old thin crescent Moon about to set. Above Venus are the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters. This is a panorama of 5 segments with the Nikon D750 and 24mm Sigma lens, stitched with PTGui. Each segment was 8 seconds at ISO 400 and f/2.8.
A panorama of Morant’s Curve, a famous viewpoint on the Bow River in Banff National Park, with an eastbound train on the CPR tracks under the stars of the winter sky. Illumination is from the 13-day gibbous Moon off frame at left. Orion is at centre; Sirius and Canis Major at left; and Taurus and the Pleiades at right. The main peak at centre is Mount Temple; the peaks at right are the ones around Lake Louise. I shot this March 19, 2019 at the start of the evening, from the new viewpoint on the Bow Valley Parkway. Morant’s Curve is named for the famed CPR photographer Nicholas Morant who often shot from here with large format film cameras. Now, how did I do this? I was shooting multi-segment panoramas at the viewpoint when a train whistle in the distance to the est alerted me to the oncoming train. I started the panorama segment shooting at the left, and just by good luck the train was in front of me at centre when I hit the central segment. I continued to the right to catch the blurred rest of the train snaking around Morant’s Curve. It took some adjustments of the masks in the panorama segments to get the train to blend well from segment to segment. This was stitched with PTGui as Photoshop would not handle this well. PTGui allows adjusting the masks on the individual segments. The equirectangular projection used stretches out and distorts the constellations a bit at top. Each segment is 8 seconds at f/3.2 and ISO 800 with the 24mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 in portrait orientation. I added a Luminar Orton glow effect to the ground for artistic effect.
