Big Dipper and Arcturus over Anderson Peak

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, a UNESCO World Heritage site and Dark Sky Preserve. The stars of the Big Dipper (aka the Plough or Wagon) are in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, most of which is visible here. The curving handle of the Dipper or Plough arcs down to Arcturus at left, in the constellation of Böotes the Bear Herdsman. Above Böotes is the semi-circle of Corona Borealis. The sky is lit by moonlight from the waxing 4-day-old Moon off frame and setting into the northwest. The foreground is very green with spring growth but the mountainside is still scarred and bare from the massive forest fire in September 2017. The bridge at right spans Red Rock Canyon and the trail left from it leads down to Blakiston Falls. TECH DATA: This is a blend of two vertical panoramas, or 'vertoramas,' one for the ground and one for the sky: - A 2-section pano untracked for the ground with 4-minute exposures to bring out detail - A 4-section pano tracked for the sky with 2-minute exposures, with the camera tilting up by 15° for each segment All at ISO 800 with the Canon R5 and Canon RF15-35mm lens at 20mm and f/2.8. The camera was on the MSM Nomad tracker. Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) turned on for all images to reduce or eliminate thermal hot pixels the R5 is prone to. Segments stitched with PTGui using stereogrqphic projection. Blended and masked in Photoshop. Ground segments processed through Adobe DeNoise AI. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)