Creeksong

Lol!.. It's a start, so don't be too tough on yourself. If I were to suggest anything, the horizon can be straightened in Hugin and it might pay to set the camera to manual to avoid Auto white-colour-balancing. You'll have even better results, I promise!

As an aside, I hear the new stitching utility in photoshop CS5 is quite effective.

Happy to help Creeksong. I wouldn't worry about auto-bracketing for your panos. Instead look to set the exposure manually and shoot the sky and the earth separately with about 1/3rd overlap on each shot. That way when you stitch it together, you'll have the best tonal range for every element.

Although I am quite busy right now and don't have much time to spend playing with this new knowledge, Give me a week or two and I hope to do you proud. The time you are spending to help me is a valuable gift, and yes, I didn't understand. But it's making better sense now. More light in the sky less on the ground. not rocket science. But I was changing the F stop and using the same speed in my latest attempts at this. For scenery, would you use the highest F stop applicable in order to provide a long depth of field?