Marc Toso of the website Ancient Skys captured this image on October 14, 2018. He wrote:
This image was taken on the edge of the Grand Gulch in southern Utah in the Bears Ears region. The Grand Gulch is a 60-mile-long [100-km-long] canyon littered with the rock art and ruins of Ancestral Puebloans. It was abandoned by the Native Americans about 800 years ago.
All of the illumination is from the crescent moon, which was about 35 percent full at the time.
This shot is a horizontal panorama since I could not fit the entire view into my 35mm field. For the shot of the sky I used a fog filter which causes the light to diffuse more, allowing the brighter stars of the constellations to stand out more.
Nikon D810a
Samyang 35mm
Tiffin 3x fog filter
The 2019 lunar calendars are here! Order yours before they’re gone. Makes a great gift.
By the way, autumn is a good time to photograph the Big Dipper against the landscape, as Marc has done here. That’s because it’s low in the sky on autumn evenings. For the casual viewer, the Big Dipper is easiest to spot on spring evenings, when it appears higher in the sky.
Thank you, Marc!
Read more: Come to know the Big and Little Dippers
Bottom line: Photo of the Big Dipper, captured from Grand Gulch in southern Utah.
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