The Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site is an inactive coal mine in Alberta, Canada that operated from 1936 to 1979. Located in East Coulee near Drumheller, it is considered to be Canada's most complete historic coal mine and is home to the country's last standing wooden coal tipple, and the largest still standing in North America.

Last night, a day after the New Moon and an almost cloudless night (not that common this this of the year) I wanted a different Milky Way photo than what I have captured to date. This time a more industrial/historic foreground.

12 days ago I started my research for this shoot. It is a ~2 hour from where I live and it's been 9 years since the last time I was in that area, and I’ve never been to the Atlas Coal Mine. Used the Planit Pro app to plan the shoot and coupled with Apple Maps (as Google did not have Streetview right next to the mine) I narrowed it down to 3 possible shooting locations. All on a public road right-of-way next to the mine and close to the mine’s overflow parking lot.

I monitored the Ventusky app to ensure we had a cloudless or near cloudless sky and at 5:30 PM set off for East Coulee just southeast of Drumheller, AB. It was still light enough when I arrived and using the PhotoPills app and the Night AR function to see where the Milky Way would be once it became visible determined the best location (of the 3 possible preselected).

This photo is 18 light frames and 5 dark frames stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker. Then edited in Photoshop making use of RC-Astro's GradientXTerminator and StarXTerminator.