Venus, very bright as an evening star, shines over the old historic Atlas Coal Mine in the Red Deer River Valley, Alberta, near East Coulee. The mine buildings are the last standing from many coal mines that operated in the valley up until the 1970s. The Atlas Coal Mine is now a museum and National Historic Site. Mercury shines at right just above the horizon. The nearly Full Moon provides much of the illumination, though a sodium vapour light also provides some of the warm light to the foreground.
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.
