AmazingSky

This is the summer Milky Way, though here on an autumn evening, over the Sheep River Falls in southwestern Alberta, down scenic Highway 546 in Kananaskis Country in the foothills of the Rockies.

The Milky Way extends from Sagittarius just setting behind the mountain, up through Scutum, Aquila and into Cygnus at top, with the red North America Nebula prominent near the star Deneb. The other two stars of the Summer Triangle are – Altair (below) and bright Vega (at upper right).

This is a vertical panorama that extends more than 100º from the Falls below to the stars nearly overhead at top.

It was a clear, dry, mild, and moonless autumn night, with what clouds there were drifting off and clearing up. And what few people were there at the beginning of the evening had gone by the time I finished shooting, though being early October this was still evening, from 8 pm to 10pm.

The ground is illuminated only by starlight. The Moon didn't rise until midnight, by which time I was back home!

Technical:
This is a "vertorama" of tracked sky and untracked ground segments:

— A stitch of 3 segments for the ground, the main one being 4 minutes at f/2 and ISO 400 with Long Exposure Noise Reduction on for hot pixel reduction, but with the upper 2 segments for 2 minutes at ISO 800 with LENR off, to get them shot quickly.

— A stitch of 4 segments for the sky, each sky segment a stack of 4 x 1 minutes at f/2 and ISO 800, stacked in Photoshop. Stacking eliminated aircraft and satellite trails. Though I left one meteor in left of centre.

However, while I shot sky segments immediately after the ground, by the time I finished them the sky near the horizon had cleared up much more. So I reshot the sky segments again from the ground up, angling the camera up at 30º, 45º, 60º and 75º. The sky comes from that second set. But the Milky Way really was in this position relative to the ground, and the tripod position was never moved.

I had this scene on my "to shoot" list for some time, for an autumn night when conditions were right, to be worth the 4 hours of driving to and from the Falls, from home 200 km away. This year they were!

All with the Nikon Z8 and Nikkor S-Line 20mm lens. And on the MSM Nomad tracker. No filters were used here.

Panorama segments stitched in PTGui with transverse cylindrical projection creating two panoramas, one each for the sky and ground, brought together to layer and mask in Photoshop. And with some deft masking for the trees!

The Moon, a day after Full and the Harvest Moon of 2026, rising over the prairie into a colourful twilight sky.

Though this was not the official Full Moon, the timing (and clearer skies!) was better tonight with the Moon rising moments after sunset, putting it in a darker more colourful and photogenic sky.

This was September 27, 2026, from a Range Road east of home in southern Alberta, with the Moon coming up 20º north of due east over the rolling rangeland.

Technical:
A panorama of 3 segments, with the Sony a7V and Sony GM70-200mm lens at 152mm.

The World at Night - TWAN

Three views from Sept 26, of the Harvest Moon amid iridescent clouds later in the evening, and of a brief rainbow at sunset over the harvested field at home.

Details are in the individual photo descriptions.

It was a fine evening, on the first day of autumn, to be in the Alberta foothills, for sunset and moonrise. These were from the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory on a special "open house" night just for members of the RASC Calgary Centre. A good time was had by all!

Details are in the individual photo descriptions.

Here are two images from the shoot at Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park on a perfect night for nightscapes, September 18, 2026. One is with the waxing Moon still up and lighting the scene; the other after moonset with the sky now dark, and the foreground lit by starlight.

All the details are in the photo descriptions.

This is the summer Milky Way over the site of the Southern Alberta Star Party in the Cypress Hills of southeastern Alberta, with the party underway and observers enjoying the dark night sky. The area is a dark sky preserve, and the Whispering Pines Camp here is home to the popular annual star party in September.

This was September 8, 2026, after a day prior of rain!

Sagittarius and the galactic core are low in the south above the meeting and dining hall. The Summer Triangle stars are at top, with the view extending up to the zenith.

Technical:
A blend of two exposures, each 30 seconds untracked, with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at 15mm and f/2.8 on the Canon Ra at ISO 3200. One exposure adds most of the scene; the second exposure adds just a different pose for the foreground observer and removes a blurry observer in the distance to reveal the telescope. AI Distraction removal used to remove power lines and poles at the site.

Being untracked, the stars are trailed somewhat, despite the wide-angle lens used and exposure time under the "500 Rule" limit of 33 seconds for this focal length.

This is a 360º fish-eye framing of the late summer Milky Way from latitude 51º North on a fine mid-September night. North is at top; south at the bottom; east to the left and west to the right where the sky is bright with urban sky glow.

At this time of year at northern latitudes the Milky Way bisects the sky, running:
- from the direction toward the galactic centre in the southwest at bottom right in Sagittarius,
- through the zenith overhead in Cygnus, where we are looking down the spiral arm we live in,
- and down to the autumn constellations of Cassiopeia and Perseus in the northeast at top left, and toward the next spiral arm out.

The dark lanes in the Milky Way are evident, particularly the Cygnus Rift at lower right. The Summer Triangle stars are at centre overhead. The Pleiades and Andromeda Galaxy are at upper left in the northeast, as is Saturn rising at left in the east. The Big Dipper is in the northwest at upper right; Polaris is above centre due north. Capella in Auriga is low in the northeast at top.

Technical:
This is a stack of 16 x 2 minutes exposures, median stacked to eliminate aircraft and satellite trails, all with the AstrHori 6mm circular fish-eye lens wide open at f/2.8, on the Canon R5 at ISO 800. On the Star Adventurer 2i tracker. This is a single framing, not a multi-segment panorama. The AstrHori 6mm lens takes in a 220º field, so all of the sky and the ground below.

Taken from home in Alberta on September 16, 2026. No filters were used. The ground is blurred from the tracker motion; I left it blurred rather than layer in a single sharper ground image, as the ground serves only as a dark frame for the sky.

Here is my report on my recent "expedition" to view the second eclipse of August, the deep partial eclipse of the Moon. Success! Illustrated with photos and charts, and a look ahead to future lunar eclipses. It's a drought for us! Glad I got this one!

Chasing the Earth-Shadowed Moon to the Mountains August 2026 featured remarkable eclipse events, including a total solar eclipse in Spain on August 12 and a significant partial lunar eclipse on August 27. The author traveled to Waterton Lakes Nat…

This is a composite of photos illustrating the actual passage of the Full Moon through the northern portion of Earth's umbral shadow on August 27, 2026.

This was not a total eclipse. At mid-eclipse at centre (at about 10:15 pm MDT) about 96% of the Moon's disk was in the umbra. The 4% still lit directly by the Sun remained bright white, looking like a "polar cap" at the top of the Moon's reddened disk. The southern, or bottom, portion of the disk was deepest into the umbra and so was darkest and reddest.

The four flanking images show the progress of the Moon through the shadow due to the Moon's orbital motion around Earth. The sequence runs from right to left, as the Moon moved west to east through the shadow and against the background stars of Aquarius. In doing so the Moon "draws" the circular shape of the Earth's umbra, which at the Moon's distance is about three times the diameter of the Moon.

The images for each Moon were taken about 30 minutes apart, so the sequence covers about 2 hours. I oriented the camera and rotated the framing so celestial north is up, as per most diagrams of eclipses and the shadow boundaries.

The earlier moons at right look yellower due to the Moon's lower altitude in the east – from my locaation the eclipse was in progress at moonrise, and the Moon climbed higher as the eclipse progressed.

I processed each Moon to best preserve the high dynamic range in brightness between the bright and dark portions of the lunar disk, to present the images more as the eye saw the Moon in the eyepiece, and to show both parts of the Moon: the bright sunlit portion and dark red umbral shadow area.

The Moon was in the star-poor constellation of Aquarius this night, but the longest exposure used at mid-eclipse did pick up many background stars. The brightest at lower left is 4.8 magnitude Sigma Aquarii, which was obvious near the Moon in the eyepiece of the wide-field telescope I had also set up beside the photo rig, just for visual looks.

I shot this from the Maskinonge wetlands viewpoint in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta on what turned out to be a very clear night. I chose the site for its potential for a wide-angle nightscape with the foreground and Milky Way, yet also being able to set up a full telescope rig beside the car for close-up shots like this. Being Waterton, there was some wind this night, but it did not affect these images.

Technical:
This is a composite of 5 sets of images, each set a blend of 7 exposures, in an auto-bracketed sequence at 1-stop intervals from short for the bright portion, to long for the umbra, with the exposure range varying throughout — for example the longest exposure in each set ranged from 1/4-second to 8 seconds. The stars come from the longest 8-second exposure in the mid-eclipse image set.

All were with the Canon R5 at ISO 100, on the Askar APO120 refractor at its native f/7 for 840mm focal length. It was on my venerable "eclipse" mount, the Astro-Physics AP400 tracking at the lunar rate. The AP400 has been to many solar and lunar eclipses.

Exposures in each set were blended with Lights1 luminosity masks created with the Lumenzia extension panel in Photoshop, with adjustments to the masks' feathering to smooth the blends. The flanking images were masked to put them "behind" the central mid-eclipse image.

Each set was shot with the Moon more or less centred in the frame. I placed each Moon manually using a background sky chart image from StarryNight software showing the shadow outlines and stars to aid accurate positioning.

Here are more views and variations of the lunar eclipse last Thursday, August 27, in wide and telescopic shots taken as the eclipsed Moon rose in the east, from the Maskinonge viewpoint in Waterton Lakes. These weren't shots I had planned to take, but the scenes were striking and well worth shooting. Details are in the individual photo descriptions.