A 360° fish-eye scene of the winter sky from home in southern Alberta, with Orion rising into the southeast at bottom, and Venus bright as an evening “star” in the west at right. The Big Dipper is low in the northeast at upper left. The Milky Way runs across the sky from northwest where summer stars are setting to the southeast where the winter stars are rising. Sirius is just rising behind the distant trees at lower left. Overhead are the autumn constellations of Cassiopeia. Andromeda, and Perseus. Below centre is the Pleiades and stars of Taurus. Some faint Zodiacal light is visible at right in the southwest, near Venus but competes with the haze and lights from towns to the west. This is a stitch of 6 segments taken with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye lens, landscape orientation, and Nikon D750, in a test of the lens’s ability to shoot horizon to zenith pans in this mode. At f/2.8 and ISO 3200 for 25 seconds each, untracked. Stitched with PTGui. The original is 8300 pixels wide.
A 360° panorama of he winter sky and Milky Way at Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta, on a very clear night, February 28, 2017. The Milky Way stretches across the sky from south (bottom) to northwest (at top right). The Zodiacal Light stretches up from the horizon in the west at right, and can be traced faintly across the sky to the east (at left) where there is a dim glow of Gegenschein visible. The view is looking south and in this scene the galactic anti-centre is near the centre of the image — i.e. we are looking toward the outer edge of the Galaxy, to the outer spiral arms opposite the galactic centre in Sagittarus, visible in summer. Orion is at bottom centre, almost due south. North is at top. This is a stitch of 6 segments with the 12mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 for 30 seconds each, with the Nikon D750 at ISO 6400, mounted portrait. Stitched with PTGui.
The stars of the northern winter sky rising at dawn on the morning of August 14, 2020, from home in southern Alberta. The waning crescent Moon is overexposed here, shining above bright Venus , then in southern Gemini as a bright “morning star” in the east. Mars is also bright and reddish, to the south at far right. Orion is rising over the ripening wheatfield at centre. Above Orion is Taurus with the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters. The bright star to the left and above the Moon is Capella in Auriga. Castor and Pollux are rising at left. A flaring satellite trail appears below Venus. This is a two-segment panorama with the 14mm Sigma Art lens at f/2.5 and Nikon D750 at ISO 800 for 20 seconds each. Stitched with PTGui which erases all the metadata from the image. I added a mild Orton Glow effect with Luminar Flex.
