Beneath the Firmament - a photo on Flickriver

            I drove north after sunset, while the crescent moon was still above the horizon, scouting for good locations to shoot another night sky panorama. My previous two attempts were affected by light pollution (more on that later.) I had scouted locations on the map ahead of time, but even with approximate distances of promising locations, in the dark it was hard to identify them in real life. I finally found a spot 75 km north of my home, in the middle of nowhere. While parking my car, I got it stuck. With one arm broken, it was tough to get the snow out of the way and get free, but I managed to do that. 

The location, was not too difficult to get to, being close to the road, but the snow was deep, even with snowshoes. I shot the 12 frames of the panorama (15 rotation between each, so with a 14mm lens, the overlap is substantial.) After shooting the panorama, I repositioned the camera to one of the middle positions, and using the intervalometer/timer, I snapped a few images with myself in frame. I planned to merge that shot with the panorama, and sand off the blurry edges of my silhouette. My left arm was much fuzzier, because it's broken and I could not hold it as still for 30 seonds. The reason the silhouette was taken afterwards and merged was due to the apparent movement of the stars, it was important to shoot the panorama as quickly as possible. The silhouette took more time to plan and execute. The results are better than I expected, but I would like to do this again, later in the month when the moon is not "polluting" the sky. Here's hoping we get some clear skies as we had this week. 

Note: my previous two panoramas had two areas of the image I thought were light pollution. Turns out the larger white area, also evident in this image, is zodiacal light, which is caused by sunlight reflecting off of interplanetary particles. It's not quite so evident to the naked eye, but in the spring in the earlier nighttime hours, long exposures can really be affected by it. I am less offended by it now I know it's not human-made ligth pollution.

Taken in: Canada / Ontario / Thunder Bay (show map)

Taken on: March 13, 2013

Tags:

Canon 5D III

Milky Way

Pickle Lake ON

Rokinon

Samyang Rokinon 14 f/2.8

comet dust

lake

night sky

silhouette

snow

starfield

stars

winter

zodiacal light

Thunder Bay, Unorganized

Ontario

Canada « less

Sets appears in: • Winter • Starscapes, Aurora, and Night Sky more » • Landscapes « less

Groups appears in: • Night Images • Night Sky, The more » • Canada Landscapes • Canada from Sea to Sea to Sea • Landscape Astrophotography • Into the Night Photography • Give 5 Faves Nature Landscape Object Building « less

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.3 (Windows)
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Stats: 89,182 views / 33 comments

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