A 360° panorama of the entire late winter/early spring sky from northern latitudes, with the winter Milky Way stretching across the sky, from south (at left) to north (at right). West is at centre. Orion and the northern winters stars are left of centre to the southwest. Just below the prominent Pleiades cluster at centre is Mars, then near the Pleiades in early March 2021. To the far left in the eastern sky the spring stars are rising. The Beehive star cluster stands out to the left of the Milky Way,. The Big Dipper is at upper right. Arcturus is rising at far right just above the horizon. Sirius is above the southern horizon left of centre. The faint glow of Gegenschein is at far left below Leo, opposite the Sun. I shot this from home on March 7, 2021 on a very clear night with no aurora to the north. This is from a latitude of 51° N. This is a stitch of 21 segments, in 3 tiers or rows of 7 segments each, with the Sigma 24mm Art lens at f/2 and Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 1600. Exposures were 30 seconds each, all untracked. The camera was moved automatically from frame to frame by placing it on the Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi motorized alt-azimuth mount, programmed with the hand controller from the old Sky-Watcher All-View mount. Stitching was with PTGui using equirectangular projection. The original is 28,000 by 8,000 pixels.
A 360° panorama of the entire later winter/early spring sky from northern latitudes, with the winter Milky Way stretching across the sky, from south (at bottom) to north (at top). Orion and the northern winters stars are at bottom to the southwest. Just below the prominent Pleiades cluster at right is Mars. To the left in the eastern sky the spring stars are rising. I shot this from home on March 7, 2021 on a very clear night with no aurora to the north. South is at bottom; north is at top. East is to the left; west is to the right, toward the major source of light pollution. Polaris is at top centre; the Big Dipper is at upper left. Arcturus is rising at left. Sirius is at bottom, above the southern horizon. This is from a latitude of 51° N. This is a stitch of 21 segments, in 3 tiers or rows of 7 segments each, with the Sigma 24mm Art lens at f/2 and Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 1600. Exposures were 30 seconds each, all untracked. The camera was moved automatically from frame to frame by placing it on the Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi motorized alt-azimuth mount, programmed with the hand controller from the old Sky-Watcher All-View mount. Stitching was with PTGui. The original is 17,000 by 17,000 pixels.
A composite image of the rising of the December 29, 2020 "Cold" Full Moon into a very clear evening twilight sky, here over the Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. The Moon rose with the Sun still up and lighting the landscape in warm tones, contrasting with the cool blues of the snowy landscape and sky. The pink Belt of Venus glow lights the lower sky near the horizon. It is not often we get a Full Moon (it was only 4 hours before being officially Full this night) rising with the Sun still up and illuminating the landscape. This is a layered blend of 13 exposures taken at 5-minute intervals, from moonrise just before sunset, to the Moon high in a dark sky more than an hour later. The ground and sky near the horizon is a blend of the first four exposures while the upper sky is from the last two exposures to place the now bright Moon into a darker sky as it actually appeared. The Moon moves its own diameter in about 2 minutes, so picking shots taken 5 minutes apart provides a good spacing for a shot with this field of view. Shots with longer telephoto lenses would be better with Moons taken every 3 to 4 minutes. These frames were taken as past of an 800-frame time lapse with the camera on auto exposure to ensure each frame was well exposed for the ground and sky. But as the Moon brightens as it rises that inevitably overexposes the Moon's disk — the exposure sequence I used here works for the time-lapse but is not so ideal for a composite still image like this. Had I wanted this to be shot taken just for a still image composite I would have had to fix the exposure at more or less what it was at mid-sequence here, to keep the lunar disk at that brightness and detail. So be it! All were with the Rokinon 85mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 100. It was about -10° C this evening.
