Panorama Photo

We had a clear sky a few days ago, allowing me to shoot this pano with much less light pollution in the air, resulting in a more realistic, darker sky and brighter stars. As Sirius is now part of the scene, I had to crop the height to obtain a minimum wide of 1400 px after downsizing but by doing so the pano lost part of the constellations of Orion and Gemini. It is a pity this pano site is restricted to 500 px height with a big loss of the beauty of the starry sky. I chose faint colored connections and star annotations through the legend to avoid overloading the picture.


The Winter Triangle, in the center of this pano, is an asterism formed by Sirius, Betelgeuse and Procyon, respectively the brightest, the 9th and 8th brightest star in the sky. Although mathematically it is a perfect isosceles triangle with Betelgeuse on the top, the angle differences are so small that it looks like an equilateral triangle. It is a magnificent view in the sky especially with the brightest stars on its corners but also because the inner space looks relatively dark with only much fainter stars. I drew the sides of the triangle in dashed magenta to distinguish from the constellations which per definition are star patterns officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union, while asterisms are not.

Note: you have to enjoy the pano in a dark room just like stargazing....

The constellations around the Winter Triangle on this pano are:

Lynx, the Lynx, incomplete;
Leo, the Lion, just above the horizon, incomplete;
Cancer, the Crab, complete;
Hydra, the Water Serpent, the head just above the horizon, incomplete;
Canis Minor, the Smaller Dog, complete;
Canis Major, the Greater Dog, just above the horizon, incomplete;
Monoceros, the Unicorn, complete;
Gemini, the Twins, incomplete;
Orion, the Hunter, incomplete;
Lepus, the Hare, complete;
Eridanus, the Celestial River, incomplete.

Leo, Cancer and Gemini are signs of the Zodiac which is a band with 12 constellations along the ecliptic: the apparent path of the Sun through the sky as a result of the Earth's rotation.


Canon Eos M6 with EF-M 11-22mm, 7 pics, format 4:3, 14 mm (22.4mm KB), iso 400, f 5, 15 s, 4200°K, PTGuiPro, 9187x3814 141.2mb TIFF, crop to height 3278, downsized 1401x500 223 KB JPEG