June 2024 – The Amazing Sky

June 27, 2024June 28, 2024

Testing the MSM Nomad Tracker

The new star tracker from Move Shoot Move improves upon their original model, eliminating its flaws to provide a reliable and compact tracker.

A few years ago the start-up company Move Shoot Move (MSM) introduced a low-cost (about $250), compact star tracker they called the Rotator. Like all other star trackers, the Rotator allowed a camera to follow the turning sky for untrailed, pinpoint stars in long exposures.

Trackers are essential for rich Milky Way images, and are great for nightscapes, for shooting the sky, blended with untracked shots of the ground, as I show in examples below.

The original Rotator (L) and new Nomad (R). The Nomad is even smaller than the Rotator.

Out with the Old …

The original Rotator went through a couple of design changes during its lifetime. I tested the last versions to be marketed, using three different sample units I either purchased or were sent to me by MSM. (My reviews appeared in 2019 on my blog here, and in the June 2021 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.)

The bottom line is that I found all the samples of the Rotator I tested to be unreliable for accurate tracking, indeed for tracking period, as units would sometimes not start tracking for a few minutes, or just stop tracking mid-shoot and then restart intermittently. Getting a set of untrailed exposures was a hit or miss affair.

But with a cost lower than most other trackers on the market (ostensibly, as explained below), a pocketable compact size, and with endorsements from notable nightscape photographers, the original Rotator garnered a loyal following of fans. I was not one of them.

MSM obviously recognized the design flaws of the Rotator, because in early 2024 they replaced it with an all-new model, dubbed the Nomad. It works!

The Nomad on the Benro 3-Way Head, with Laser and Polar Scope, and with a camera and 135mm lens. The ball head is not one from MSM.

I purchased a unit in January 2024 when the Nomad came out, and have used it extensively and successfully over the last few months. I found it has addressed all the serious flaws of the Rotator.

Polar Alignment Accessories

With a weight of about 400 grams, the Nomad is about 70 grams lighter than the old Rotator. It is one of the lightest and smallest trackers on the market, a benefit for those wanting to hike to remote nightscape sites, or pack gear for airline travel. (I took my Nomad to Australia this year; one result is below, shot with the Nomad.)

This frames the spectacular area of the southern Milky Way from Centaurus at left, to Carina at right, with Crux, the Southern Cross, at centre. This is a stack of 8 x 4-minute exposures with the Canon RF28-70mm lens at 48mm and f/2.8, on the Canon Ra at ISO 800. All on the MSM Nomad tracker.

However, unlike the popular Star Adventurer 2i and Mini trackers from Sky-Watcher, the Nomad, like MSM’s older Rotator, does not have a polar alignment scope built in, just a peep sight hole. That makes it easier for MSM to fit a tracker inside a compact box.

And yet, I feel some form of polar alignment aid (not just a peep sight) is essential if a tracker is to follow the sky accurately. Like the Rotator, the Nomad can be purchased with two add-on choices (shown below):

• a 5 mw green laser pointer,

• and an optical polar scope …

… each of which attaches to the side of the Nomad as outboard accessories. I purchased both, bundled with the Nomad as “Basic Kit C” for $309 U.S., and find both accessories useful.

NOTE: When shopping at the MSM website don’t be fooled by what looks like temporary sale prices. The prices are always marked down, though MSM does offer coupon codes now and then for genuine discounts. I’ve always found MSM’s delivery by parcel post prompt, and in my case, shipments came from a warehouse in Canada, not China.

The Laser and Polar Scope as they come supplied

As with the Rotator, the need to add essential accessories makes the Nomad more expensive and more complex to pack than buyers might think. And it can be more complex to initially set up than imagined, not helped by the lack of any instructions. (I’m told by MSM that a downloadable PDF sheet is being prepared.) In place of factory-supplied instructions, MSM depends on its YouTuber fans to provide tutorials.

It took me a moment to figure out how the laser attaches to the Nomad — it does so by replacing the black cap that comes on the laser with a supplied threaded red cap, so the laser can screw into the peep hole on the Nomad’s body that is covered by yet another cap you remove — but don’t lose it, as you might need it.

The optical polar scope attaches by way of an included clamp held onto the Nomad by the laser, or by the removable threaded cap (so you will need it if you aren’t using the laser, but it is easily lost).

Out of the box I found I had to adjust the beam of the laser (using the two tiny set screws on the laser) so the beam exited straight out the laser and up the peep hole in the Nomad’s case.

Once collimated, the laser pointer has proved to be an accurate and convenient way to polar align, especially for shooting with wide-angle lenses. (Keep in mind, green laser pointers over 1 mw are illegal in some jurisdictions.)

The laser uses a removable and rechargeable 3.7-volt battery, and comes with a little USB-powered charger. The laser’s battery has lasted for months of momentary use. The laser works briefly in winter when it is warm, but as soon as it gets cold, as is true of most laser pointers, it refuses to lase!

This frames the small constellations of Sagitta the Arrow and Vulpecula the Fox.
At lower left is the green planetary nebula Messier 27, aka the Dumbbell, shown in the close-up tracking test image below. This is a stack of 14 x 2-minute exposures with the Canon RF135mm lens on the Canon Ra, on the MSM Nomad tracker. The images were the best 14 out of a series shot to test the Nomad’s tracking.

However, for the more accurate polar alignment needed when shooting with telephoto lenses (an example is above), and for winter use, I prefer to use the optical polar scope, with the laser a handy complement just to get close to the pole.

The polar scope has a reticle etched with star patterns for both the North and South Celestial Poles. I found the latter worked well in Australia. The mounting clamp held the polar scope securely and consistently well centered, another welcome improvement over the polar scope clamp supplied with the Rotator, which could wiggle around.

Polar scope with its glow-in-the-dark Illuminator. The Nomad comes with an Arca-Swiss dovetail plate bolted onto the bottom edge, for attaching it to a tripod head or to the optional MSM Wedge.

The polar scope does not have an illuminator LED. Instead, it comes with a novel phosphorescent cap which you hit briefly with white light so it glows in the dark.

Placed over the front of the polar scope, it lights up the field allowing the reticle to be seen in silhouette. While it works fine for sighting Polaris, the bright field can make it hard to see the faint stars in Octans around the South Celestial Pole.

The Nomad on the Benro 3-Way Geared Head, using the Arca-Swiss attachment plate. Another method of mounting the Nomad to the Benro is shown below.

To aid polar alignment I purchased the Benro 3-Way Geared Head, also sold by MSM but available from many sources. Its geared motions make it easy to aim the tracker’s rotation axis precisely at the pole and hold it there solidly.

The Benro accepts standard Arca-Swiss mounting plates, so I’ve found it a useful head to have for other purposes and gear combinations. It has replaced my old Manfrotto 410 3-axis head which uses a proprietary mounting plate.

However, MSM also sells its own latitude adjustment Wedge which, at $90, is a cheaper alternative to the $200 Benro. I’ve not used the MSM Wedge, so I can’t say how solid and precise it is. But the Wedge is lighter than the Benro head, and so may be a better choice when weight is a prime consideration.

I would recommend either the Wedge or Benro for their fine adjustments of azimuth and altitude that are essential for easy, yet precise and stable polar alignment.

Tracking Accuracy

All-important is how well the Nomad tracks. When shooting with wide-angle lenses (14mm to 35mm) for nightscapes and wide Milky Way shots, the majority of images I’ve taken over the last few months, using exposures of 1 to 3 minutes, have been reliably well tracked, with pinpoint stars.

The Nomad begins tracking right away, with no wait for gear backlash to be taken up, or for the drive mechanism to settle in. I also found no tendency for tracking to be better or worse with camera position, unlike the Rotator that seemed to work better with the camera aimed at one area of sky vs another. And the Nomad didn’t suffer from any stalls or moments when it just stopped in its tracks, again unlike the problematic Rotator.

20 consecutive 2-minute exposures with a 135mm lens, to show the variations in tracking accuracy. Tap on the image to download it for closer inspection.

As with any tracker, where you do see mistracking is when using longer lenses. I tested, and indeed have used, the Nomad with 85mm and 135mm telephoto lenses, as many owners will want to do, for close-ups of Milky Way starfields and for so-called “deepscapes.” (An example of the latter is at the end.) The demo image above shows blow-ups of consecutive frames from the 135mm shoot of the Vulpecula/Sagitta starfield shown earlier.

In those more demanding tests, as I demonstrate here, I found that typically about 50% to 60% of images (taken with 1- to 2-minute exposures) were tracked well enough to be usable. The longer the focal length used, or the longer the exposures, the more frames will be trailed enough to be unusable in an image stack. And a well-tracked frame can be followed by a badly tracked one, then the next is fine again. That’s the nature of small drive gears.

As with other trackers, I would suggest that the Nomad is best used with lenses no longer than a fast 135mm. Even then, plan to shoot twice as many frames as you’ll need. Half may need to be discarded. While I know some users will want to push the Nomad beyond its limits, I would not recommend burdening it with monster telephoto lenses or small telescopes. Like all other trackers, that’s not its purpose.

When there was mistracking it was usually in the east-west direction, due to errors in the drive mechanism, and not north-south due to flexure. (If it occurs, north-south drift is likely due to poor polar alignment.)

I found the Nomad did indeed turn at the sidereal rate to follow the stars, something I was never confident the Rotator actually did.

While you might think a 50% success rate with telephotos is not good, in fact the Nomad’s tracking performance is on par with other competing trackers I’ve used, from Sky-Watcher and iOptron. At wide-angle focal lengths the success rate proved closer to 100%.

So for a tracker as compact as the Nomad to perform so well is very welcome indeed. It’s the main area where the Nomad beats the old Rotator by a long shot!

NOTE: While the MSM website mentions an “optional counterweight system,” as of my review’s publication date it is still being developed, MSM tells me. However, I don’t feel it will be necessary for the Nomad’s main purpose of wide-field imaging.

Mechanical Stability

Another flaw of the old Rotator was that it had several single-point attachments that, under the torque of a turning camera, could cause the camera to come loose and suddenly flop down.

Exploded view of the ratcheted mounting plate to attach a ball head to the Nomad

The Nomad uses a ratcheted clamp to attach a user-supplied ball head to the tracker body, and that clamp has an additional safety set screw to help ensure the ball head does not unscrew itself as a camera turns.

I’ve had no issues with cameras coming loose. Of course, the solidness of the ball head used will be critical as well. A large ball head can be better, but introduce some of the issues I report on below.

While MSM offers its own ball head, I have not used it, preferring to use a couple of other ball and pano heads I like, and that I show in the images here.

Simplicity of Operation

The Nomad improves upon the old Rotator by doing away with all its time-lapse features. You might think that eliminating features can’t be an improvement, but in this case it is.

I suspect few owners used the Rotator’s preset functions for slowly turning a camera along the horizon while firing the camera shutter between each incremental time-lapse move (the very function that gave the company its name!). The Rotator’s options for creating time-lapses were confusing to set up and limited in their choice of speeds. A serious time-lapse photographer would never use it.

(If you do want a tracker with time-lapse motion-control capabilities the Star Adventurer Mini works well. Its WiFi connection and mobile app allows a user to set all the factors needed for a good time-lapse: interval, angle increment, number of frames, and length of shoot.)

Instead, MSM has focused the Nomad on being just a star tracker, and I think wisely so. Its only controls are a three-position S-OFF-N switch, for using the Nomad in either the southern or northern hemisphere. It worked very well “Down Under,” with the exception noted below.

There is no solar or lunar drive rate, unnecessary in a tracker, and also no half-speed rate for nightscapes, used to lessen star trailing while also minimizing ground blurring. I’ve never liked using trackers at such a compromise half-speed rate, so I don’t miss it.

Using the optional V-Plate described below, I have used the Nomad to take tracked Milky Way panoramas, as shown here. It has worked very well for that purpose, with it easy to switch the tracking on (for the sky) and off (for the ground).

This is a 200° panorama of the arch of the northern Milky Way rising over Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. Shot with the Nomad, with a blend of an untracked panorama for the ground and tracked panos for the sky.

The gear used to take the panorama above, including the Alyn Wallace V-Plate, supporting an Acratech 2-axis pan head. The Nomad is ON here, set to N. Below the power switch is the USB-C port for charging and external power.

My only criticism is that the power switch is a little mushy and perhaps easy to slide on by mistake when it is packed in a bag.

An LED for each of the N and S directions glows red to indicate the power is on and the direction chosen, handy to help prevent you from choosing the wrong direction by mistake.

The Nomad is powered by an internal lithium battery that charges from any 5-volt USB charger (the Nomad comes with a USB-C cord, but no charger). The Nomad takes about 2.5 hours to charge to full and runs for 6 to 7 hours of continuous tracking at room temperatures. A second LED by the USB port glows yellow when the Nomad is charging, and green when it has fully charged.

In practice the Nomad has lasted for several nights of shooting on one charge. When the battery level is low, the red LED for the other direction begins blinking. As a backup in the field, the Nomad can be powered via its USB-C port by any external 5-volt power bank.

Collisions

The Nomad hasn’t been without issues, though the main problem I’ve had I can’t, in fairness, blame on the Nomad.

Due to the Nomad’s small size and shape, ball heads sit close to the Nomad body. Locks and clamps sticking out from ball heads can collide with the Nomad, or with the Benro head, as it rotates the ball head. Here I show how a collision can occur when aimed up at the zenith.

Showing the ball head colliding with the Benro when aimed high.

But collisions can also occur when aimed at the Celestial Pole. I ran into that issue in Australia, where many of the wide-field targets in the Milky Way (such as the field in Carina and Crux shown earlier) lie close to the South Celestial Pole.

A camera aimed toward the Celestial Pole (either South or North) is more likely to collide with the Nomad than when a camera is aimed toward the sky opposite the Pole.

As I show above, one night when tracking targets in Carina I found the ball head had jammed against the Nomad, seizing its motion. As I feared, that caused something inside the Nomad to come loose.

After the collision incident no frame was well-tracked. The Nomad was wandering all over the place!

From then on it failed to track well for any shots. The drive was wobbling the stars in random directions. No frame was usable. The Nomad was now out of commission, not a welcome prospect when you have traveled to the other side of the world to shoot the sky.

The access hole with a handy adjustment screw that fixed the issue.

What was the solution? There was only one point of adjustment accessible to users, a mysterious hole on the side of the tracker with a small hex screw at the bottom. This is normally covered by a rubber plug, though that was either missing on arrival or got lost along the way from my unit. Upon inquiry, MSM told me the screw is for use just at the factory, for a final adjustment of the gear and bearing distance.

But in my case, tightening it slightly seemed to do the trick, restoring normal tracking. However, my unit still tends to make intermittent clicking sounds now and then, though it seems to track well enough again.

The lesson here is don’t let gear collide with the Nomad. It likely has no internal clutch, making it unforgiving of being jammed.

Collision Avoidance

How do you avoid collisions? What I should have used in Australia was MSM’s optional V-Plate designed by the late and sadly missed Alyn Wallace.

I bought one a couple of years ago, but never thought to bring it with me on the Australia trip. As I show above, the V-Plate allows for much more freedom to aim a camera, either toward the Poles or straight up (as I show above), or low in the sky 180° away from the Pole, without fear of the ball head hitting other components.

The V-Plate’s shortcoming is that, despite cranking down the levers that hold it in position, it can still slip under the weight of a heavy camera sitting on the diving-board-like platform supported only on one end. The V-Plate’s locks are not as solid and secure as they should be. But with care it can work well. And you need buy only the V-Plate; not the Z-Plate.

I should note that since I got my V-Plate, it has been upgraded with a larger lever handle to aid tightening the tilt lock. However, it really needs another support point on the tilt adjustment, so it can’t move as readily under load.

V-Plate lock knob hard to get at and adjust

In addition, MSM now offers a taller Arca-Swiss mounting block as an option, to replace the plate that comes bolted onto the Nomad with two Torx screws. That optional riser block moves the Nomad farther from the Wedge or Benro head, helping to prevent some collisions. By putting more space between the Nomad and the Benro head, the riser block makes it easier to get at the small locking clamp on the V-Plate’s rotation axis. But …

Shortly after I first published this review, a loyal reader (thanks, John!) pointed out his method of placing the Nomad on the Benro, with the Nomad turned 90° to the way I pictured it earlier. As I show below, this places the Benro’s lock knob on the side of the Nomad, not back. The benefit is that the V-Plate’s azimuth lock lever is now more accessible and well-separated from the Benro. That method makes the taller riser block unnecessary.

Here’s a reader-suggested alternative method for mounting the Nomad and orienting the Benro head that puts more space between the V-Plate and Benro, for ease of adjustment.

Even with this alternative method, the V-Plate tends to block the laser’s beam, as does a camera once it is mounted. The polar scope can also be blocked. It’s an example of how one MSM accessory can interfere with another accessory, perhaps requiring yet another accessory to solve!

Laser beam hitting the V-Plate with it horizontal

In practice, with the V-Plate installed, polar alignment often has to be done before attaching the camera or setting up the V-Plate to the desired orientation. When adding the camera, care has to be taken to then not bump the Nomad off alignment. That’s why I like the Benro head as a stable platform for the Nomad, despite its extra weight.

As I illustrated earlier, the V-Plate is also an essential accessory for shooting tracked-sky Milky Way panoramas, as it allows a camera to be turned parallel to the horizon from segment to segment while it also tracks the sky.

A “deepscape” of the Sagittarius starclouds over Mt. Blakiston, in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta. This is a blend of two exposures: a single untracked 2-minute exposure at ISO 1600 for the ground, and a single tracked 2-minute exposure at ISO 800 for the sky, taken immediately after, with the Nomad tracker motor now on. With a 28-70mm lens at 70mm, on the rig shown.

Recommendations

So, as with the Rotator, when buying a Nomad, plan on adding several “optional” accessories to your cart. They can, in fact, be essential.

However, they can add another $150 (for V-Plate + Wedge + riser block) to $250 (V-Plate + Benro head + riser block) to the total. These are in addition to the cost of the polar alignment aids offered in the various Basic bundles. I like having both the laser and polar scope, but for shooting just wide-angle nightscapes, the laser alone will do.

The cost of accessories makes the Nomad not quite the low-cost tracker you might have been sold on, nor as self-contained and compact as it first appears. Just choosing what combination of gear to buy can be daunting for beginners.

The Milky Way and its core region in Sagittarius and Scorpius over the Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. This is a blend of untracked exposures for the ground and tracked exposures for the sky, with the Canon Ra on the Nomad, with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at 20mm at f/2.8.

But when well-equipped, the little Nomad can work very well. Despite my run-in with a collision glitch, I can recommend the Nomad as a good choice for anyone looking for a solid, accurate, but portable tracker that can slip into any camera bag.

Just make room in your bag – and budget! – for polar alignment aids, V-Plates, wedges, and ball heads to complete your tracking kit.

And then don’t let anything collide with the Nomad!

— Alan, June 27, 2024 – Revised June 28 / AmazingSky.com

June 17, 2024June 17, 2024

Nights at World Heritage Sites

I present a selection of new images taken at local World Heritage Sites, along with some advanced nightscape shooting tips.

I’m fortunate in living near scenic landscapes here in southern Alberta. Many are part of UNESCO World Heritage Sites that preserve regions of unique scenic and cultural significance. In early June I visited several to shoot nightscapes of starry skies over the scenic landscapes.

I also took the opportunity to experiment with some new shooting techniques. So I’ve included some tips and techniques, most of the advanced variety.

First up was Dinosaur Provincial Park.

The Milky Way and its core region in Sagittarius and Scorpius is here low over the Badlands landscape of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta.

After nearly a month of rain and clouds, the night of May 31/June 1 proved wonderfully clear at last. I headed to a favourite location in the Red Deer River valley, amid the eroded badlands formations of Dinosaur Provincial Park, site of late-Cretaceous fossil finds.

The bright core of the Milky Way in Sagittarius would be in the south. With the night only three weeks before summer solstice, from the Park’s latitude of 50.5° N the sky would not get astronomically dark. But it would be dark enough to show the Milky Way well, as above in this framing looking south on the Trail of the Fossil Hunters.

However, May and June are “Milky Way Arch” months, at least for the northern hemisphere. The full sweep of the northern Milky Way, from Perseus in the northeast to Sagittarius in the southeast, then stretches across the sky — high enough to be impressive, but low enough (unlike later in summer) to be framable in a horizontal panorama.

This is a 200° panorama of the arch of the northern Milky Way rising over the Badlands landscape of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta.

To capture the arc of the Milky Way I shot a panorama — in fact three:

one exposed for the ground
one exposed for the sky, but with the camera now tracking the sky to keep stars pinpoint
and a final sky panorama but with a specialized filter installed in front of the camera sensor to let through only the deep red light emitted by nebulas along the Milky Way

Rig for tracked panoramas with the MSM Nomad tracker

The image above shows my rig for taking tracked panoramas. The rectangular box is the little Nomad sky tracker from Move-Shoot-Move (MSM), here equipped with its accessory laser pointer to aid the “polar alignment” that is needed for this or any tracker to follow the turning sky properly.

A review of the MSM Nomad will be forthcoming (subscribe to my blog!). However, I’ve found it works very well, much better than MSM’s original Rotator tracker, which was entirely unreliable!

On top of the little Nomad is an Acratech pano head, so I can turn the camera by a specific angle between each pano frame, both horizontally from segment to segment, and vertically if needed when raising the camera from the ground pano to the sky pano.

The pano head is on a “V-Plate” sold by MSM and designed by the late, great nightscape photographer (and engineer by trade), Alyn Wallace. The V-Plate allows the camera to turn parallel to the horizon when on a tipped-over tracker. The entire rig is on a Benro 3-Axis tripod head (also sold by MSM, but widely available) that makes it easy to precisely aim the tracker for polar alignment and then hold it rock steady.

The H-Alpha Panorama rendered in monochrome

I’d taken many panos before using sets of untracked ground and tracked sky panoramas. New this night was the use a “narrowband” Hydrogen-Alpha filter to take a final pano that brings out the red nebulas. I used a filter from Astronomik that clips into the camera in front of the sensor. Such a filter has to be used on a camera that has been modified to be more sensitive to deep red light, as the Canon Ra shown below is (or was, as Canon no longer makes it).

While a modded camera brings out the nebulas, using an H-Alpha filter as well really shows them off. But using one is not easy!

Astronomik clip-in filters, the 12nm H-a on the right

The clip-in placement (unlike a filter in front of a lens) requires that the lens be refocused — infinity focus now falls at the 3 to 6 metre point (the focus shift varies with the lens and focal length — the wider the lens the greater the shift). With the image so dark and deep red, seeing even a bright star to manually focus on is a challenge.

Shifting the lens focus also changes the overall image size (called “focus breathing”) and often introduces more off-axis lens aberrations, again depending on the lens.

So, blending the H-Alpha pano (which I rendered out in monochrome, above) into the final stack is tough, requiring lots of manual alignment, image warping, BlendIf adjustments, and masking. This is where I added in the red colouration to taste. Careful here, as the “Saturation Police” patrolling social media will issue tickets if they judge you have exceeded their “speed limit.”

The complete panorama with Photoshop layers and adjustments

The final pano required a complex blend of image and adjustment layers, all applied non-destructively, so the many elements of the scene can be individually tweaked at any time.

The work was worth it, as the final pano records the deep red nebulas contrasting with the deep blue of a sky still lit partly by twilight, a magenta aurora to the north, and bands of green and yellow airglow, all above the earth tones of the Badlands. It is one of my favourite nightscape panoramas.

As a further note on software: For stitching panos I try to use Adobe Camera Raw first. It can work very well. But complex panos, especially taken with very wide lenses, often require the specialized program PTGui, which offers more choice of pano projection methods, cleaner stitching, and control of panorama framing and levelling.

Next up was Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.

A week later, with the waxing Moon beginning to appear in the western sky and the promise of clear nights, I headed south to the 49th parallel borderlands of the Milk River and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, known as Áísínai’pi to the Blackfoot First Nation who revere the site as sacred.

My plan was a framing of the galactic centre over the Milk River valley and distant Sweetgrass Hills in Montana, perhaps using the H-Alpha filter again. But clouds got in the way!

A 13-segment panorama of the landscape and sky just as the Sun sets over Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (Áísínai’pi) in Alberta.

When you are faced with a cloudy sky, you make use of it for a colourful sunset. I like shooting panoramas at such sites as they capture the grand sweep of the “big sky” and prairie landscape. Above is the scene at sunset.

A 14-segment panorama of the landscape and sky at sunset at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.

Above is the same scene a few minutes later as the Sun, though now set, still lights the high clouds with its red light, mixing with the blue sky to make purples. On the hill at right, a couple admires the sunset, adding a human scale to the vast skyscape.

This pano was with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at 15mm and the camera in portrait orientation to capture as much of the sky and ground as possible in a single-row pano.

A 13-segment panorama of the sandstone landscape in blue-hour twilight at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.

I finished the evening with another panorama, but using a Canon RF70-200mm telephoto lens at 70mm to zoom in on the Sweetgrass Hills in the deepening twilight.

For these panoramas, exposures were short, so I didn’t need to track the sky. I used another combination of gear shown above. An Acratech ball head sits atop another style of panorama head that has adjustable click stops to make it easy to move the camera from segment to segment at set angles. When the lighting is changing by the second, it helps to be quick about shooting all the pano segments. Such pano heads are readily available on Amazon.

That pano head sits atop an Acratech levelling head (there are many similar units for sale), an essential addition that makes it easy to level the pano head so the camera turns parallel to the horizon. Any tilt will result in a panorama that waves up and down, likely requiring fussy warping or cropping to correct. Avoid that; get it right in-camera!

A single-image portrait of a sunset sky with the waxing two-day-old crescent Moon amid colourful clouds over the prairie.

As the sky lit up, I also shot the crescent Moon above the sunset clouds and prairie scene. While the clouds made for a fine sunset, they did not clear off, thwarting my Milky Way plans this night. I headed back to Milk River, to travel farther west the next day.

From Writing-on-Stone I drove along scenic Highways 501 and 5 to Waterton Lakes National Park.

A nightscape scene under a twilight “blue-hour” sky, on the Red Rock Canyon Parkway in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, looking west toward the sunset with the four-day-old crescent Moon.

After an initial cloudy night, I made use of the (mostly) clear night on June 10 to shoot twilight scenes with the now four-day-old crescent Moon in the evening sky. Here I wanted to play with another technique I had not used much before: focus stacking.

To keep exposures short (here to minimize the blurring effects of the constant wind at Waterton) you have to shoot at wide apertures (f/2 in this case). But that produces a very shallow depth of field, where only a small area of the image is in focus.

So I shot a series of six images, shifting the focus from near (for the foreground flowers) to far (for the mountains and sky). Photoshop has an Auto Blend function that will merge the images into one with everything in focus. I also shot separate images exposed for the bright sky, shooting a vertical panorama — dubbed a “vertorama” — moving the camera up from frame to frame.

I shot an additional short exposure just for the Moon, to prevent its disk from overexposing too much, as it did in the twilight sky images.

Twilight sky assembly and layers in Photoshop

So what looks like a simple snapshot of a twilight scene is actually a complex blend of focus-stacked ground images, panoramic sky images, and a single short image of the Moon replacing its otherwise overly bright disk. But the result better resembles what the eye saw, as single exposures often cannot record the range of brightness the eye can take in.

A nightscape scene under a moonlit sky, on the Red Rock Canyon Parkway in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, looking back along Pass Creek to the south, with the Milky Way rising at left.

About an hour later, from the same location, I shot the other way, toward the Milky Way rising over Vimy Peak, but the sky still lit blue by moonlight. This, too, is a blend of focus-stacked ground and panorama sky images. But the camera was on a fixed tripod for exposures no longer than 15 seconds. So I didn’t use the tracker.

And here the longer exposures do pick up more (colours, fainter stars, and brighter ground detail) than was visible to the eye. Revealing more than the eye can see is the essence and attraction of astrophotography.

A vertical panorama of the moonlit spring sky with the Big Dipper and Arcturus over the jagged outline of Anderson Peak at the Red Rock Canyon area of Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta.

Heading down the Red Rock Canyon Parkway, I set up the tracker rig for the darker sky, now that the Moon was nearly setting. I shot a vertical panorama, with two untracked ground segments and four tracked sky segments, to capture Arcturus and the Big Dipper over the iconic Anderson Peak.

Comparing without and with LENR – Lots of coloured specks without LENR! Tap to zoom up.

For all the images at Waterton and Writing-on-Stone I used the 45-megapixel Canon R5 camera, great for high resolution, but prone to noise, especially colourful thermal hot pixels. (See my review here.)

For all the long exposures I turned on Long Exposure Noise Reduction, a feature most cameras have. LENR forces the camera to take a “dark frame,” a second exposure of equal length, but with the shutter closed. The camera subtracts the dark frame (which records only the hot pixels) from the previous light frame. The final image takes twice as long to appear, but is much cleaner, as I show above. So a two-minute exposure requires four minutes to complete.

While there are clever ways to eliminate hot pixels later in processing (using Photoshop’s Dust and Scratches filter), doing so can blur details. I’ve long found that doing it “in-camera” always produces better results.

The Milky Way rising over the peak of Mt. Blakiston, in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada.

With the Moon now down, I turned the camera the other direction toward Mt. Blakiston, to capture the star clouds of the summer Milky Way rising behind the mountain, in an example of a “deepscape,” a nightscape with a telephoto lens. This is another technique I’ve not used very often, as the opportunities require good location planning and timing, transparent skies, and a tracker. Apps like ThePhotographersEphemeris coupled with TPE3D, and PlanItPro can help.

Deepscapes frame landscape fragments below some notable deep-sky objects and starfields, in this case a region with several “Messier objects” — nebulas and star clusters well-known to amateur astronomers.

This was a blend of one untracked and one tracked exposure, again on the Nomad. Taking more frames for stacking and noise reduction, while a common practice, was not practical here — at this focal length of 70mm the sky was moving enough that the mismatch between sky and ground would make blending tough to do.

And the reality is that today’s AI-trained noise reduction software (see my test report here) is so good, image stacking is not as essential as it once was.

For many of the Waterton images I used the Canon RF28-70mm lens, usually wide open at f/2. For the image below I used the RF15-35mm lens at its maximum aperture of f/2.8. (See my test report on these lenses here.)

The stars and clouds trail across the sky over Cameron Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, and Mt. Custer across the border in Glacier National Park in Montana.

On my final night in Waterton I drove the Akamina Parkway to Cameron Lake, located in extreme southwest Alberta on the borders with British Columbia and Montana. The glaciated peak to the south is Mt. Custer in Glacier National Park, Montana.

Again, I had hoped to get a deepscape of the photogenic starfields in Scorpius above Mt. Custer. But as is often the case at this site, clouds wafting over the Continental Divide defeated those plans. So Plan B was a set of long exposures of the clouds and stars trailing with the last light of the low Moon lighting parts of the scene. Chunks of ice still drift in the lake.

This is a blend of separate multi-minute exposures for the ground and sky, all at the slow ISO of just 100, and all untracked to purposely create the star trails, not avoid them.

So over a total of four nights at these wonderful World Heritage Sites, I was able to try out some new shooting techniques:

H-Alpha blending
Focus stacking
Deepscapes
As well as panoramas, both horizontal and vertical

Every nightscape outing is a learning process. And you have to be prepared to change plans as the clouds dictate. I didn’t get all the shots I had hoped to, but I still came away with images I was very pleased with.

I hope you enjoyed them. Clear skies!

— Alan Dyer / AmazingSky.com