A 360° panorama on the high plains of Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, Alberta, July 15, 2013 on the Graburn Road. This is an 8-section panorama with the 8mm fish-eye lens, with segments at 45° spacings and each exposure 90s at f/3.5 and with the Canon 5D MkII at ISO 3200. North is at left, south in the middle, with the road running east to west. Visible from left to right are: very low level aurora - the Survivor Tree and lights from my other cameras shooting and my car - bands of green airglow running across the sky from east to west - a spot of light from a distant thunderstorm and lightning - the centre of the Milky Way setting in the southwest - airglow bands in the west - and horizon glow from Medicine Hat. Segments processed in Photoshop and assembled with PTGui, then further processing of stitched scene in Photoshop.
This is the Milky Way of the autumn season in the Northern Hemisphere, on a late September night, from the very dark site of Red Rock Canyon, in Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada. The scene is a crop from the full 360° rectangular panorama, taken about 11:00 pm. Illumination is solely by starlight. Being autumn, the larches and aspens are in autumn colours. Snow is on Mount Blakiston at left, while the sharp peak at centre is Anderson Peak. The galactic centre is toward the southwest at left of centre, though Sagittarius itself had set by the time I shot this panorama. The bright star cloud of Scutum is above the mountains. The Milky Way stretches up through Aquila, through the Summer Triangle stars, and across the top as the Milky Way was then passing through the zenith. At right, the sky is red from airglow and a dim aurora. At left is the dim glow of the Gegenschein. My other camera is in the scene, shooting a time-lapse of the Milky Way motion. This is a multi-tier panorama, with the full 360° panorama consisting of 48 segments (!), in 4 tiers of 12 segments each, taken with the iPano motorized panning unit. Each exposure was 30 seconds at f/2 with the 24mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 6400. Stitching was with PTGui, which did it flawlessly. The original of this image is 12,800 x 5,600 pixels.
