A wide-field view of
Ursa Major (a.k.a., the "
Great Bear" or "
Big Dipper") and
Ursa Minor (a.k.a., the "
Lesser Bear" or "
Little Dipper"), taken in my backyard during the transition between the "blue hour" and "astronomical twilight" on August 18, 2024. View is looking north and you can see the last glimmers of sun light softly shining from the west, making the horizon and several low-hanging clouds glow orange. The final image is a stack of thirty 10-second and ten 60-second subframes taken between 9:25 pm and 10:15 pm (EST). The trees and skyline is real, extracted from the 10-second subframes.
Captured using a Canon 60Da DSLR camera and Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens on a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer mount. ISO was set to 400; sensor temp was 24°C for the 10-sec frames and 26°C for the 60-sec frames. The camera was connected via USB cable to a Raspberry Pi3 running StellarMate, enabling me to set up the imaging sequence beforehand and execute it remotely using my iPhone.
The field of view is roughly 96° x 59° with the center of the image located at RA: 11° 48' 42.8" Dec: +58° 01' 50.6”
PixInsight used to process the data. The resulting image was taken into Adobe Photoshop where the seven stars comprising each constellation were ever-so-slightly enlarged and brightened (a.k.a., the Akira Fujii effect). In this way, the constellations stand out from the surrounding star field, making them slightly easier to see. Their asterisms are shown below and in Revision B.
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