The blue glow of summer solstice twilight in the north (at left below the Big Dipper) and the Milky Way arching over Castle Moun
The blue glow of summer solstice twilight in the north (at left below the Big Dipper) and the Milky Way arching over Castle Mountain at right, on the Bow Valley Parkway, in Banff National Park, on a very clear moonless night June 4, 2016. The road seems to lead from the Big Dipper to the Milky Way. Despite this being shot after midnight, the sky to the north is still bright with twilight which lasts all night at this latitude near solstice. However, the Milky Way still stands out. In early June the Milky Way arches across the eastern sky and is not yet overhead as it is later in northern summer, making it easier to frame in a pan like this. The Big Dipper at upper left is distorted by the map projection used to create the pan, which stretches the sky across the top near the zenith to fill the rectangular frame, like Greenland being distorted in Mercator maps. Polaris is left of top centre - the Dipper bowl still points to it. This is a panorama stitched and cropped from 28 panels in 4 tiers of 7 panels each, shot with the iPano motorized panning unit. Each exposure was 20 seconds at with the Sigma 24mm Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 5000. Stitched with PTGui.
Size: 5400px × 1921px
Location: Castle Mountain, The Bow Valley Parkway, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Photo credit: © Alan Dyer / VWPics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., 4, 2016., arching, astronomy, banff, big, blue, bow, castle, clear, dark, dipper, glow, highway, ipano, june, lead, milky, moonless, mount, mountain, national, nature, night, nightscape, north, panorama, park, parkway, perpetual, polaris, ptgui, road, rockies, sky, solstice, stars, summer, trees, triangle, twilight, valley
