It’s an edgy shot — and Richard Wang’s tilted image of the summer Milky Way rising in Mactier, Ontario took the prize for Photo of the Week May 29, 2020.

Taking the photo May 20, Wang noted the lingering high-altitude clouds to the south associated with a low-pressure system, which gave off a warm golden glow as they reflected the light pollution of southern Ontario.

“Note how the clusters M6 and M7 are visible through the thin cloud layer,” he said. “This contrasts with the dry air and pristine skies in the wake of the low-pressure system, which provide a cooler palette.”

He said he used a Canon EOS Rebel T100 with a Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II lens working at 18mm and f/3.5. He took 9 exposures at 60 seconds each and tracked them at ISO 1600 for the sky, and he followed with five 120-second untracked exposures at ISO 1600 for the ground (for 19 minutes of exposure total). He said tracking was done using a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer mount.

“The sky and ground exposures are stacked separately using Sequator, then the sky and ground are stitched together and post-processing is done in Photoshop,” he wrote.

This week’s honourable mention goes to Andre Cajolais for his re-worked image of Markarian’s Chain.

“During this difficult time, I’ve gone back to some images taken during the past months and thought I could try to revisit the pre processing and processing of the Markarian Chain,” he wrote.

He said he took the image last year in Rodeo, New Mexico, “was expecting to add more data this spring, but…”

He took the data for the image with a ZWO ASI294Pro and a Celestron C11 Edge + Hyperstar. His focal ratio was set to f/2, and he took 26 exposures at 120 seconds each on April 27, 2019.

Noting it was a little short in terms of data, he said Astro Pixel Processor did a very good job, and a few final tweaks were done with Polarr for Mac.