A 360° panorama taken in the pre-dawn hours (4:45 a.m.) on December 8, 2013, from the Painted Pony Resort in SW New Mexico. The panorama takes in, from left to right: • Arcturus just on the treetop • the zodiacal light rising up from the east • red Mars embedded in the zodiacal light below Leo • the Milky Way from Puppis and Canis Major at left arching up and across the sky down into Perseus at right • Sirius the brightest star • Orion setting over the main house • Jupiter, the bright object at top centre in Gemini • Aldebaran and the Pleiades setting right of the main house in Taurus • Polaris over the smaller house at right • the Big Dipper pointing to Polaris at upper right • a green glow along the northern horizon above the smaller house that may be some aurora (there was a good display this night from northern latitudes) or may be intense airglow. • green and red bands throughout the sky are airglow • bands of high cloud also permeate the sky adding natural glows around the stars. This is a panorama created in PTGui software from 6 segments, all tracked, taken with the 14mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 for 2.5 minutes each and with the Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. PTGui does not preserve EXIF data.
A 360° panorama and from horizon to zenith of the southern sky and Milky Way from Smoky Cape and the grounds of the Lighthouse and Cottages. The Dark Emu in Crux and Centaurus is rising at left, while Canis Major and Sirius are setting right of center. The Magellanic Clouds are left of centre. The evening Zodiacal Light is visible arching up from the west at right, with Jupiter the bright object in the Zodiacal Band at right. The Lighthouse itself is just behind the trees on the hill at left and is ouf of sight though its beams are lighting the sky above the trees. Other sky colouration comes from light pollution and from airglow. I like the way the arch of the Milky Way mirrors the arch in the trees on the hillside sweeping down to the beach. I stayed for four nights in the cottage at right, and the dark window in the room at right was mine. The panorama is a stitch of 9 segments, each shot with the 15mm full-frame fish-eye lens in portrait orientation, and at f/2.8 with the Canon 6D at ISO 3200. All exposures 1 minute, untracked on a tripod. Stitched in PTGui using equirectangular projection.
