Blazing Zodiac (Chris Beere)

Contains: Extremely wide field

Blazing Zodiac

Deep in the heart of the Namibian Great Escarpment lies the Gamsberg mountain range. Concealed in a valley amidst the Gamsberg foothills is the Rooisand Desert Ranch, named for the ancient windblown Kalahari desert sands to the eest that render vivid red tones across its plains.

This is a 56 panel panorama of the night sky shot from the far western end of the Rooisand runway on May 21st 2023. Commencing at 04:00 when the galactic plane had transited the meridian and was rolling down in the west.

By 05:00 the zodiacal light on the opposite horizon was absolutely blazing and illuminating the entire runway. I was worrying that i was going to run out of time (i knew it was going to be a squeeze) but managed to complete the shoot at 05:30 just as Jupiter and Mercury made an appearance over the mountains.

I actually captured 330 degrees of sky in a 5 row 11 column set that included the entire scene but you cant project that much sky stereographically and i dont like mercator as it distorts the proportions of the galactic plane. So i ended up taking 40 panels and rendering stereographically.

Shot with a Sigma Art 28mm f/1.4 DG HSM lens and a modded Canon 6D MKII.

Sky exposures - 40 x 1 minute at f/2.0 ISO 1600 - 5 rows 8 columns
Land exposures - 5 x 1 minute stacks at f/2.0 ISO 1600 - 2 rows 8 columns

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9233601
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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