People gaze skywards at the public stargazing session, Milky Way Night, at the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory, operated by the University of Galgary. Roland conducts the laser star tour. This was August 30, 2014. Exposure was 13 - 20 seconds at f/3.2 with the 15mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 4000.
The Milky Way over the old corral at the site of the 76 Ranch in the Frenchman Valley in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan. I shot this Aug 26 on a perfect night, with aurora beginning to kick up but still low in brightness when I shot this so the sky was dark. The foreground is lit by starlight, by the aurora brightening in the north, and by the occasional flashes of spotlights from naturalists down the valley spotting for nocturnal ferrets. The green bands in the sky are from natural airglow. This is a composite stack of 5 images: 4 tracking the sky on the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer for the sky and 1 untracked shot with the motor off, which supplied the sharp ground. The blurred ground in the tracked shots was masked out in Photoshop. All images were 3 minutes at f/2.5 with the 24mm lens and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600.
Mars (bottom) and Saturn in conjunction at right, and the Milky Way at left, in deep blue twilight before the sky got filly dark, over the old corral of the 76 Ranch, in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, August 27/28, 2014. Antares and Scorpius are just behind the corral gate at right, Sagittarius is at left in the Milky Way. M6 and M7 open cluster are visible at left. This is a composite of two images: one tracked (for the sky) and one untracked (for the ground) images, both 60 second expsosures at f/2.8 with the 24mm lens and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 2000. The tracker was the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer.
