Galaxy and glacier! This is a vertical panorama of the Milky Way Galaxy over Lake Louise and Victoria Glacier in Banff National Park, Alberta. The Summer Triangle stars of Vega, Deneb and Altair are at centre. The Scutum Starcloud is just above and setting over Victoria Glacier. The dark lanes of interstellar dust — stardust! — weave among the bright star clouds of the Milky Way.

I shot this on a fine night on October 17, 2022 from the usual lakeshore promenade. While a very iconic scene, it is a challenge to shoot at night as lights from the Chateau Lake Louise illuminate the foreground and even the distant wooded mountainsides. Some green and red airglow tints the sky along the horizon.

This is a blend of three vertical panoramas:
- the first is a set of three untracked 2-minute exposures for the ground at ISO 800 with the camera moved up by 15° from segment to segment;
- the second shot immediately afterward is made of 7 x 1-minute tracked exposures at ISO 1600 for the sky, also moved 15° vertically from segment to segment;
- elements of a third 3-section panorama taken about 90 minutes earlier during "blue hour" were blended in at a low level to provide better lighting on the distant peaks.

All with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at f/2.8 and 20mm and Canon R5, and with the camera not moving between image sets, and on the Star Adventurer Mini tracker. The reflected stars are trailed as they come from the untracked ground shots. Tracking reflected stars is very tough as it requires re-aligning the tracker to turn around the reflected celestial pole, in my case 51° below the horizon, not very practical.

Panoramas stitched in Adobe Camera Raw and blended and masked in Photoshop. A mild Orton glow effect added with Luminar Neo. Foreground and landscape enhanced with Radiant Photo plug-in.