Milky Way over the 76 Ranch Corral

The Milky Way over the old corral at the site of the 76 Ranch in the Frenchman Valley in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan. I shot this Aug 26 on a perfect night, with aurora beginning to kick up but still low in brightness when I shot this so the sky was dark. The foreground is lit by starlight, by the aurora brightening in the north, and by the occasional flashes of spotlights from naturalists down the valley spotting for nocturnal ferrets. The green bands in the sky are from natural airglow.

This is a composite stack of 5 images: 4 tracking the sky on the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer for the sky and 1 untracked shot with the motor off, which supplied the sharp ground. The blurred ground in the tracked shots was masked out in Photoshop. All images were 3 minutes at f/2.5 with the 24mm lens and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600.

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