Terrestrial and Cosmic Reds [Explored]

            During one of my flights from San Francisco to Zurich, I captured a time lapse sequence of the northern lights over Newfoundland. 

While checking the sequence at home, I decided that a single frame with some beautiful auroral rays over the lights of Saint Anthony was worth being processed as a still image. During processing, I was surprised to see that the Andromeda Galaxy was visible through the green Aurora at the left edge of the frame.

I also found that the constellation Cygnus and Cepheus nicely aligned above the Aurora, although, the reds of the hydrogen emission nebulae were missing, as my camera wasn't able to record them in the short 5s exposures, but I was nevertheless able to weakly see the North America Nebula. 

This had me thinking... Would it be possible to align and add narrowband nebula data that were captured from the ground to this airborne shot? I started searching for an image with a similar FOV, and when I found one, I tried some PixInsight magic. To my surprise, it worked on the first try.

The resulting composite image is impossible to capture with today's camera technology. However, all the nebulae are in their correct position, and the rest of the image, including the stars, were captured in the same single exposure as the Aurora and the ground.

EXIF 
Canon EOS-R, astro-modified 
Sigma 28mm f/1.4 ART

RGB data:
Single exposure of 5s @ ISO6400, captured from the flight deck of a Boeing 777-300ER cruising at 33'000ft.

Narrowband data:
Tracked stack of 3x 105s @ ISO6400 captured through an IDAS NBZ filter from the ground.
   

Taken on: December 30, 2022

Tags:

Aurora

Aurora Borealis

Pilots View

Milky Way

Cygnus

Narrobanding

Long Exposure

Night

Canon

Canon EOS R

Astro-Modified

Sigma

Sigma 28mm f/1.4 « less

Sets appears in: • Aurora Borealis • Airborne Astrophotography more » • explored • Milky Way • Aerials • Aviation • Astronomy « less

Groups appears in: • After Dark - Night Photography • Into the Night Photography more » • Apod GrAG Submission • APOD by Astronomia.com Submissions « less

Stats: 17,637 views / 56 comments

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