From my archives

Shot in March 2018 at the North Frontenac Dark Sky Preserve in Ardoch, Ontario. Composed of 28x10 panels for the sky and 6 panels for the landscape.

Backstory:

I had been trying to photograph the full arch of the Milky Way ever since I began astrophotography 3 seasons ago and all attempts ended in failure, until this time.

My two astro-buddies and I drove 2 hours west of Ottawa in the early morning hours to get to the North Frontenac Dark Sky Preserve in Ardoch, Ontario, in time for a 3:30 am setup in -20 degree Celsius temps to be ready to shoot from 4:30 - 5:30 am. Our window of opportunity would be just a little over an hour so no room for mistakes. After a successful photo-shoot we enjoyed an artery-clogging trucker's breakfast in Carleton Place which was the perfect ending to an awesome photo shoot under the stars!

Regarding the footprints:

I really lucked out with this one. My two buddies and I were cramped together on a helipad to the left and our red night lights were getting in each other's shots. So before the shoot I ventured out into the field and walked towards the fence to try to find a more secluded position. Then, just before sun up I shot a few quick landscape panorama shots and as it turned out my footprints from an hour before were just perfect to add interest to the scene! Not planned, just lucky!

Technical info

Camera: Nikon D5500

Lens: Sigma 24-35/f2 Art

Tripod head: Sirui L-20S Pan/Tilt Head

Sunwayfoto DDP-64SI Indexing Rotator for Panoramas

Aperture F2

Exposure: 6 seconds x 10 shots and stacked

ISO 3200

Focal length 24mm



Shooting workflow:

4 rows, 7 frames/row, 10 shots/frame. Begin shooting at the top row left side and work left to right then down to horizon row. I completely restacked and reprocessed these panels in Pixinsight with calibration frames.

Processing workflow:

28 stacks of 10 images each processed in Pixinsight as follows:

- Step 1: Calibration and Integration with 100 darks, 100 bias and 64 flats

- Step 2: Automatic Background Extraction and Dynamic Background Extraction depending on the stack

- Step 3. Background Neutralization

- Step 4. Color Calibration

- Step 4. Stretch using ArcsinhStretch

28 processed stacks were stitched together with Microsoft ICE (awesome program by the way!!!)

Foreground landscape images stitched in MS ICE

Foreground pano blended into sky pano in Photoshop CS5

Final processing of complete image done in Photoshop CS5