A 360° panorama taken in the pre-dawn hours (4:45 a.m.) on December 8, 2013, from the Painted Pony Resort in SW New Mexico. The panorama takes in, from left to right:
• Arcturus just on the treetop
• the zodiacal light rising up from the east
• red Mars embedded in the zodiacal light below Leo
• the Milky Way from Puppis and Canis Major at left arching up and across the sky down into Perseus at right
• Sirius the brightest star
• Orion setting over the main house
• Jupiter, the bright object at top centre in Gemini
• Aldebaran and the Pleiades setting right of the main house in Taurus
• Polaris over the smaller house at right
• the Big Dipper pointing to Polaris at upper right
• a green glow along the northern horizon above the smaller house that may be some aurora (there was a good display this night from northern latitudes) or may be intense airglow.
• green and red bands throughout the sky are airglow
• bands of high cloud also permeate the sky adding natural glows around the stars.
This is a panorama created in PTGui software from 6 segments, all tracked, taken with the 14mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 for 2.5 minutes each and with the Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. PTGui does not preserve EXIF data.
The Amazing Sky 