On July 26, 2014, Matt Pollock and I captured this spherical panorama of green airglow and the Milky Way over Bar Harbor from Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine. Cassiopeia can be seen in the left side of the Milky Way arch. The Big Dipper is to the left of Bar Harbor. Polaris (the north star) and the Little Dipper sits between them. The sphere consists of 5 photos of the sky blended with 4 photos of the ground. It took about 22 minutes to shoot from 11:30 – 11:52 PM. We spent the rest of the night shooting a timelapse for star trails and stargazing.

Camera settings: ISO 6400, f/2.8, 40 seconds, & 3550°K white balance for the sky blended with ISO 6400, f/2.8, 160 seconds, & 3786°K white balance for the ground.

Hardware used: Nikon D810, Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 (lens hood shaved off for full frame use), Promote Control, and Really Right Stuff TVC-34L tripod with leveling base & multi-row pano package.

Software used: Edited with Lightroom, stitched with PTGui Pro, and blended with Photoshop. Pixel Fixer was used with a dark frame to remove hot pixels from long exposures at high ISO. The star spikes on the Big Dipper were added with Star Spikes Pro.

Prints available at http://galleries.aaronpriestphoto.com/Night/Airglow-on-Cadillac-Mountain/