A 240° panorama of the Milky Way on an early May night, in the wee hours at about 2 am with the Milky Way rising across the east

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A 240° panorama of the Milky Way on an early May night, in the wee hours at about 2 am with the Milky Way rising across the east. Cassiopeia and Perseus are at left, Cygnus at centre, and Sagittarius at right low on the horizon. At far right is Mars (brightest) and Saturn above Antares in Scorpius low in the south. A faint aurora and possibly airglow adds some green and red at centre. I shot this from the field next to my rural yard in southern Alberta. Lights from farms and gas plants mar the horizon and brighten the sky to the north and east. I shot this as a test of the iOptron iPano motorized panning mount. This is a stitch of 32 segments (!), shot in 4 rows or tiers of 8 segments each, with the 35mm lens at f/2 and stock Canon 6D at ISO 4000. All segments developed in Camera Raw, then exported to TIFFs to import into PTGui software. I used the Equirectangular projection to stitch the segments. Final processing of the flattened panorama in Photoshop. The original is 25,400 x 8,500 pixels.

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Size: 5400px × 1813px
Location: Alberta, Canada
Photo credit: © Alan Dyer / VWPics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 2, 240°, alberta, astronomy, cassiopeia, centre, cygnus, dark, early, east., farm, field, horizon., hours, ioptron, ipano, lanes, left, light, mars, milky, night, nocturnal, panorama, panoramic, perseus, pollution, prairie, ptgui, rising, sagittarius, saturn, scorpius, sky, spring, stars, summer, triangle, vega, wee