OT: Photography

[Rubi]

Plz don't judge as I've never done stargazing and have lived in Calgary pretty much my entire life, but is that how the night sky actually looks like with the naked eye when in the countryside? Or are you just using photographic magic with a lot of exposure time to get one photo of the sky like that?

Voodoo camera magic. The human eye doesn't see anything like this. It's there... we just can't physically see it without an assist from the camera.
Also, this really isn't one photo. Its actually 10 photos of the same scene merged into one. The camera was locked in one position on a tripod and 10 photos were taken (one right after the other) and each photo exposure was 15 seconds (longer than that and you begin to get star trails). By merging the photos you reduce the noise (some people call it grain) and improve the dynamic range. After the photos are merged into one I then tweak it a bit more in Lightroom (I tweaked all 10 photos in Lightroom before merging them). Adobe Lightroom is a photo processing program that has some similar functions as Adobe Photoshop.

P.S. You should really get out of the city and take a look at the night sky some evening. Its truly amazing, even by looking at it through the naked eye.
You will actually get to see something that humans have looked at for thousands of years. You don't have to drive far... a drive out to Elbow Falls will be fine. Take a lawn chair and have a seat and enjoy the view. You will get the best view of the stars when there is little to no moon visible (light polution and all that). If you go within the next couple of evenings you will find the view spectacular.