Milky Way Over the Icefields

From the photographer: “The Milky Way over Athabasca Glacier and the Columbia Icefields in Jasper National Park, Sept 14, 2014 on a very clear night before moonrise. The center of the Galaxy area in Sagittarius is setting in the southwest behind the Icefields. The foreground light on the moraines is a wash from lights on the Glacier View Inn and Icefields Center. Other ground illumination on the peaks is from starlight, though the tops of the peaks are just being lit by light from the rising waning Moon which is also beginning to light the sky a deep blue. Mount Andromeda is at left. The Summer Triangle stars are at center.

This is a photo composite of 5 shots, including one tracked shot for the sky, blended in Lighten mode and 4 shots, untracked, for the ground, blended in Mean combine mode to reduce noise. The trailed sky is masked out of the ground shots and the trailed ground is masked out of the sky shots, so both ground and sky are sharp but the sky has the benefit of the longer exposures required to really bring out Milky Way details. Each sky shot was 3 minutes and each ground shot was 4 minutes, all at f/3.2 with the 15mm lens and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. Tracked on Star Adventurer mount with the drive turned off for the ground images at the end of the sky exposures.”