21 Apr 2019. Clean and dark and bright and sharp 🔭 I hope that everyone viewing my photos can get to see truly dark skies at least once in their lives. Several years ago I read that more people now live in cities than in rural areas, meaning that each person’s chance of seeing more than just a few stars at night is rapidly decreasing. The city that I live in, Sydney, Australia, is not a place with dark skies and that’s the reason I drive for at least an hour when I go out to shoot nightscape photographs. It’s not unknown for me to drive much further, though. 🚙 A couple of weekends back I was at this dark site at Wayo, in the Southern Tablelands region of my state of New South Wales. The location comes into the “drive much further” category, at about 160 km (100 mi) straight-line distance from home, with a driving distance of 210 km (130 mi). There was a small amount of moisture in the air, but the darkness of the skies allowed plenty of starlight to shine through for me to photograph. 🌌 I shot three slightly overlapping photos that I then blended in a process called “stitching”, to create a single image with a wider field of view than my camera could see. Although I could have shot with a wide-angle lens to capture the scene, I wanted to use my fast 50mm f/1.4 lens. The extra work required was worth it as I have managed to photograph a vast amount of detail in the dust lanes that surround the Milky Way’s galactic core, as well as some of the colour in the nebulae around the star Rho Ophiuchi. 📷 For each of the component photos, I used a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.8, using an exposure time of 6 seconds @ ISO 6400.
17 Apr 2019. Clouds in a cloudless sky ⛪ The Kialla Uniting Church is located northwest of the Australian rural city of Goulburn. The building was erected in 1903, but I’m not sure if it’s still in use. The sign out front gives the pastor’s contact phone number, a six-digit number. We haven’t had six-digit numbers in rural areas in Australia since 1997 or so, which makes me think that the building might now sit idle. 💨 The clouds that I referred to in this post’s title are several. First up (first and second?) are the Magellanic Clouds, the two distinct blobs of white that are hovering over the roof of the church. These two wispy wonders are satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way, and between them, they are estimated to contain over 33 billion stars. For the most part, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are only visible in the Southern Hemisphere. 🌌 Also present in this vista are the vast clouds of interstellar dust and gas that signify the central band of the Milky Way. A little to the left of centre at the top is the dark nebula known as The Coal Sack, making itself known by blocking the light of distant stars. There are lots of other dark nebulae in my photo, concentrated around the top left of the shot and I also captured the Eta Carinae nebula across to the right. 📷 I shot three single and overlapping photos that were used to create this final image. For each of those shots, I used the following equipment and settings: a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 6400.
15 Apr 2019. A windmill on a windless night 💨 There was no perceptible breeze on Friday night when I was out shooting nightscape images in the Southern Tablelands region of my state of New South Wales, Australia. I guess that raises a question: Is a windmill still a windmill if there’s no wind? Is it just a “mill”? 🤦‍♂️ Whatever! The lack of breeze made things very quiet. There were only a couple of cars that passed through the location while I was there and the lack of any other noise meant that I could hear them driving into the distance for a long time. If you’ve ever seen the movie “North by Northwest” then you’ll know the scene where Cary Grant is standing out in the cornfields, amongst the quiet, and the sound of passing cars takes a long time to fade away. Unlike the movie, though, I wasn’t shot at by a low-flying crop-duster. 🌌 I’m rambling on, I know, so will finish up and note that the bright spot near the centre and about 1/4 down from the top is the planet Jupiter, its brightness contrasted with the enormous dark dust and gas clouds characteristic of the Milky Way’s galactic core. A little down and to the right of the windmill is the planet Saturn. 📷 This post is a single-frame image that I shot with Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.6, using an exposure time of 6 seconds @ ISO 6400.
13 Apr 2019. Silos full of stars. 🌌 With clear skies predicted for lots of my shooting locations on Friday night, my decision wasn’t one of “should I go out and risk it being cloudy”, but more the case of deciding which location I should visit. Although I was faced with a drive of over two hours each way, it had been a couple of years since my last trip to these silos south of Goulburn, Australia, so that’s where I went. Despite two different cloud-forecast services indicating cloudless skies all night, there was a large cloud bank to the south, and southeast of the silos, seen here at the bottom right-hand corner of the photo. 💡 Even though this is a rural locality, there is a car speedway off to the east, and its carpark lighting seems to be left on all night. That was frustrating, but one of the lights did provide a nice “starburst” effect through the support structures that hold up the silos. ✨ Almost as bright as that light below the silos is the planet Jupiter, rising into the heavens and situated above the line between silos two and three (counting from the left). Like all photographs this one doesn’t convey the smells that were assailing my nostrils as I stood outside the compound, clicking away to try to get a few good shots. 📷 For this single-frame photo, I used a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, with an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.
11 Apr 2019. Cemetery Under the Core ⛪ It’s been nearly impossible to find any details online about this cemetery near Pejar, New South Wales, Australia. The only information that I turned up suggests that the oldest headstone there is dated 1875 and the church that shares the same piece of land was built by locals in 1903. If you’ve followed me for even a short time, you’ll know how I love to pass on information about what I’m photographing, but this time around we’ll all have to settle for those two tidbits. 🌌✨ However old it is, the cemetery sure hasn’t been around as long as the Milky Way, seen here stretching up from the horizon to overshadow the countryside. The stars & planets, comets & asteroids, nebulae & dust clouds that make up our home galaxy are at their densest concentration in what is known as the galactic core, seen near the centre of this shot. 🔭 One third down and about one quarter in from the left of the shot is the brilliant white light reflecting from the planet Jupiter. Another planet, Saturn, had not long risen when I took this shot. You can see it a little above the bloom of white light coming from behind the distant hills. 📷 This image is a single-frame photo that I shot with a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 6400.
07 Apr 2019. Heavenly homestead 🏠 The “Dog Star”, Sirius, is the brightest star visible in the night sky from Earth. Although its mass is only about twice that of the Sun, Sirius’ brightness is 25 times more than our home star. As bright as it is though, Sirius was no match for the light coming from this rural homestead near Marulan, Australia, when I visited on Saturday night (6th April). Seeing Sirius in the western sky in the mid-late evening tells southern hemisphere people like me that the colder months are very close. ✨ In the centre of my image is Orion, one of the most-known constellations worldwide. As I’ve written in some previous posts, I’ve been aware of Orion in the night skies since a dear uncle of mine pointed it out to me when I was five years old, nearly 50 years ago. The lovely orange-red star Betelgeuse, a “red supergiant”, is lurking in the treetops to the right of the main “saucepan” section of Orion. 📷 To shoot this simple single-frame photo I used my trusty Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.
04 Apr 2019. Starlight in the moonlight 🌙✨ Although I prefer to take photos of the Milky Way shining against a dark sky, I don’t mind being able to add some moonlight to a scene on the odd occasion. If you can manage to get a night when the moon is in a “Goldilocks” crescent phase (not too thick; not too thin, but juuuust right) then you’re blessed with another natural light source to add to your scene. I’ve not taken many of these types of shots, but after viewing plenty of excellent moonlit Milky Way images by Ian Inverarity @ian_inverarity, Mark Polsen @markjpolsenphotography and Richard Tatti @nightscapeimages I knew that I could probably learn from these photographers–and many others–and get a few of my own. 🌌 As with yesterday’s photo, this one was taken from the ocean rock shelf at Gerroa, on the southeast coast of New South Wales, Australia. After a couple of hours of cloudless and moonless skies–and plenty of photos–a faint yellow glow started to show on the horizon, signalling that the moon would soon begin climbing the heavens once again. That rich yellow hue is in sharp contrast to the greenish colour of the background sky caused by atmospheric airglow, and the purplish-brown stains on the indicating where dust lanes lie across the central band of our galaxy. A bonus was being able to capture some of the airglow and moonlight reflecting off the surface of some of the shallow ocean pools left behind by the receding tide. 📷 As well as the moonlight I did use a hand-held LED bank, set to a colour temperature of 3400k, to make the rocks and pools unmissable features of this image. To photograph the vista I used a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.8, with an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.
03 Apr 2019. 'Twas a dark and windy night (but not cloudy) 💫✨💨 After seemingly endless weeks of persistent cloud, last Saturday night was mostly clear, and devoid of moonlight, until about 2:00 am. The wind was blowing at close to 50 km/h (around 30 mph), but fortunately was running offshore, meaning that the waves breaking on this rock ledge weren't as large as I'd expected. Still, it was hard to find a shooting position that was out of the wind but with simultaneous views of the rocks, the ocean and the Milky Way. For the few precious hours that I was on the coast here at Gerroa, Australia, I captured enough images to give me a quiver-full of material for a week or so of social media posts. 😱👏🌌 If you’d been standing alongside me on Saturday night, you would have heard my usual gasps of “wow”, “whoa”, “that’s amazing” and “I’ll never get tired of this” as I watched the preview images come up on my camera’s LCD. In this photo I caught the Milky Way’s core region rising over the Tasman Sea, with the planet Jupiter’s intense white light dominating the sky. Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system after Jupiter, is a bright dot here a little to the right of centre and not far above the horizon. 📷 This single-frame image was photographed by my excited self using a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.
01 Apr 2019. The Universe In The Treetops SOOC 👌🏻 •• The letters “SOOC” in the title indicate that this is a Straight Out Of Camera photo, meaning that I haven’t cropped, brightened, de-noised or processed the image in any way. As best as I can tell, this is what the camera saw. 🔭 When I shoot nightscape photos, I always try to compose my shots with two main aims. The first is to contrast the enormity of the universe with our small and fragile planet. The other approach is to look for ways to link those elements. Sometimes it’s one or the other, but mostly I like to combine the two because, despite our relatively small part in it all, we are residents of that universe. 🌌 Last night (Sunday 31st March) I visited a location where I spent many nights cutting my teeth on nightscape photography back in 2014 and 2015, Maddens Plains, New South Wales, Australia. Apart from a smattering of homesteads and the highway and freeway that pass through, Maddens Plains’ most prominent feature is the fog that often slows down the traffic on those roads. There’s also a telecommunications installation there that provides a relay point between the cities of Sydney and Wollongong. Despite being located between my state’s largest and third-largest cities, the site offers skies dark enough for Milky Way photos like this one. When I took this shot, I was right next to my car, putting away my gear before driving home. 📷 I used an exposure time of 6.0 seconds for this image that I captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera. The 6D was fitted with a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens set to f/1.8, and the ISO I used was 6400.
31 Mar 2019. Coloured Cathedral Circles 🌏 Once per day our planet Earth turns on its axis, rotating through 360 degrees. Divide that number by the 24 hours that make up each day, and you get a figure of 15 degrees of movement of the sky per hour. That’s not a great deal of motion, and it’s certainly too slow for you to see, even if you stand really, really still. 🎥 A simple way to detect and record that movement is to set up a camera to take a long-exposure photo. Back in the days of film photography we'd use a camera’s “B” setting and lock the shutter open for an hour or more. With digital cameras, the most common method of creating a star-trails shot is to make the camera take lots of shorter photos that are in sequence, then use software to blend those individual shots into a final image. 🌌 Today’s photo was made using this method, with the individual images taken over 2.5 hours at Cathedral Rocks near Kiama, Australia. In that time the camera clicked off 530 shots. Once I got home, I imported the photos into Adobe Lightroom for basic editing, then stacked (blended) them, using the free application StarStaX. 📷 To capture those 530 single frames I used a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, with each shot exposed for 15 seconds @ ISO 3200.
27 Mar 2019. "By any means necessary" 🌓 On Tuesday of this week the US Vice President, Mike Pence, called for the United States to land Astronauts on the moon within five years “by any means necessary”. I think I’m right in guessing that what Mr Pence didn’t have in mind was flying to the moon on a Boeing 737! 🔭 As close to the moon as this Qantas 737 looks in my photo, there is a distance of about 390,000 kilometres (242,000 miles) between the two. This apparent proximity is due to an optical illusion known as “forced perspective”, which can make objects appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than they actually are (per Wikipedia). 🙏 I was eight years old when the last humans landed on the moon, so maybe I’ll live to see us return one day, perhaps by any means necessary. 📷 To capture this photo I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, fitted with a Sigma 50-500mm lens fully zoomed to 500 mm. The aperture was set to f/6.3 and the exposure time was 1/1250 second. I set the camera’s ISO to 200. • • • • • #moon #lunar #moon_awards @moon_awards #aircraft #aviation #qantas @qantas @qantas.fanpage @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #telephoto
08 Mar 2019. Look down! 🙈 When shooting sunrises and sunsets, many photographers know the rule of “look behind you”. Quite often there is a beautiful scene happening on the opposite side of the sky to where the sun is doing its thing, so it’s worth spinning 180 degrees to look and see what you might be missing. When I’m out capturing nightscape images, and I’m near water, my rule is “look down”. There could be a pool, a puddle, a lake or a river that provides a mirror for photographing the stars, right at your feet. 🌌 While I had one camera automatically shooting a time-lapse at Cathedral Rocks (Kiama, Australia) last Sunday night, I was clambering over the volcanic rock formations, looking for a natural mirror. This saltwater rock pool gave me what I was after, doing an excellent job of reflecting the details of the Milky Way’s core region up to my camera. I used my LitraPro LED torch to reveal the rocks in the foreground, while light pollution from the nearby residences lit the shoreline further away. You can also see some details of the rock pool’s bottom surface through the water. For this shot, I used a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.8, for an 8-second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams @litragear #kiama #reflection
07 Mar 2019. Up too late, but too good to miss! 💤 😴 Getting to bed at 5:30 am after a night of photography, then having to be up at 7:30 am for a work call is crazy, right? Noted! I’m still catching up on sleep, but it’s worth being tired all week with photos like I’m posting today. I trekked back down to Cathedral Rocks at Jones’ Beach, Kiama (Australia) on Sunday night and shot lots of images of the Milky Way’s core as it rose once again, accompanied by Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. 🤝 👍💫 Not only did I get little sleep but lots of photos, on this outing I got to meet fellow nightscape photographer Ivan Slade @ivansladephotography. Ivan and I have followed and encouraged each other on Instagram for around four years, and live in the same city, but had never met. We still don’t know what each other’s faces look like as it was dark and we didn’t want to ruin our night vision by lighting ourselves up. Ivan kindly included me in one of his shots (I don’t think he had a choice) and posted it on his feed earlier this week. Please check out Ivan’s feed and follow him. ✨ If you read my post from yesterday (6th March), you’ll recall that I said that the planet Venus is very shiny. Here is Venus being very shiny again, at the bottom of the photo where it’s not far above the horizon and reflecting off the water. The almost-as-shiny Jupiter is up and to the left, just near the dust lanes of the Milky Way’s central band. 📷 This photo is a single-exposure image that I shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, using a 13-second exposure @ ISO 3200. I lit the rocks using a LitraPro 60-LED light bank, set to 5% brightness and a colour temperature of 3200K. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams #kiama #cathedralrocks #venus #jupiter
06 Mar 2019. Bright light from the second planet 😱 Venus is the second planet from our Sun, and is very close in size to our home world, with a diameter that’s only 650-odd km (403 miles) less than Earth’s. Due to its planet-wide cloud cover, Venus has a high degree of reflectivity of the sunlight falling upon it. This measure of reflectivity is called the planet’s “albedo”, and for Venus, this figure is around 75 per cent. Even with all of our cloud and shiny oceans, the Earth’s albedo is only about 30 per cent. In plain English? Venus is very shiny. 💫💨 In my photo, you can see just how bright Venus can be, as its light reflects off the ocean’s surface and also illuminates the clouds off the coast. Unfortunately, the clouds blocked most of the light from the Milky Way’s galactic core, but you can still see some of it up above Venus. The planet Jupiter is also present in the shot, about 1/3 in from the left and 1/4 down from the top of the frame. 📷 This image is a single-exposure photograph that I shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, using a 10-second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams #venus #jupiter #clouds
01 Mar 2019. At (almost) any time in history 🌋 The core region of the Milky Way was ascending from the horizon when I captured this photo early in February, providing a spectacular backdrop to the equally spectacular volcanic formations known as Cathedral Rocks. The source of the light that made the rocks, sand, ocean and distant headland visible was the residential area of Kiama Downs, a small suburb on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. If not for that manmade glow, this photo could have been shot at any time in recorded history, and much earlier. ✨ The planet Jupiter is the bright white dot a little to the right of the closest spire. Planets are easy to spot in the night sky since they don’t twinkle as the stars do. Within an hour or so of Jupiter’s unveiling for the night, Venus was seen breaking through the distant clouds near the horizon. 📷 I shot this single-exposure photo with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, using an 8-second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams #jupiter #galacticcore #kiama
24 Feb 2019. The colour of night 😰 Due to the recent full moon, and a cloud front that has hung around for over a week–and that kept me from photographing the Supermoon full moon–I don’t have any new Milky Way core photos to present. Yes, I’m stir crazy. All I have to offer today is this image that I shot in early January this year, using my iOptron SkyTracker mount with my Canon EOS 6D camera. ✨ You’ve probably seen me rant on previously about how bad I am at aligning a star tracked, but on this night I seem to have mastered the art for at least half an hour. Using a tracker enables you to take photos with exposure lengths measured in minutes, rather than 30 or fewer seconds. In this case, I had the camera’s shutter open for two minutes (and one second), resulting in the capturing of the beautiful crimson hues of the Eta Carinae Nebula region. Wisps of dark interstellar dust dangle down below the nebula, and there’s no missing the dark, obscuring gases that make up the Coal Sack Nebula, left of centre down the bottom. Be sure to swipe across on Instagram to view a marked-up version of the image. 📷 Apart from the iOptron SkyTracker, I used the following equipment and settings to take this photo: Canon EOS 6D camera, Canon 50mm STM lens @ f/3.2, 121-second exposure @ ISO 800. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #ioptron #ioptronskytracker #etacarinae #southerncross
18 Feb 2019. The Stars of a southern summer 🌌 The Pleiades, the Hyades and Orion are some of the stars–in the astronomical and the theatrical sense–of the summer skies of the Southern Hemisphere. In my photo yesterday, of the International Space Station passing by the Pleiades and the Hyades, I commented that there would be many more stars in the picture if I’d shot it somewhere away from my light-polluted home. The location where I took today's photo is one of those "somewheres", on the far south coast of my home state of New South Wales, Australia. 😱 It’s so dark there that even in this 10-second photo you can see the purplish hue of the emission nebula known as Barnard’s Loop, around the right-hand side of Orion. The Orion Nebula, in the handle of Orion’s Sword (known as the handle of the Saucepan down here), is more clearly evident, though. 📷 This post is a single-frame photo that I shot with a Canon EOS 6D, camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, for a 10-second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #orion #barnardsloop #pleiades #hyades #tuross #bodalla
17 Feb 2019. The Pleiades, the Hyades and the ISS 🛰 I haven’t had any time to select and edit a Milky Way photo today, so here’s shot of the International Space Station (ISS) as it passed over my home in Sydney, Australia tonight (17th Feb). The star cluster known as the Pleiades is in the lower left-hand quarter of the scene, and the sideways V-shaped cluster known as the Hyades is near the top centre. Both star clusters reside in the constellation Taurus. The ISS was around 480 km (300 mi) above me when I captured this 1-second image. If I could have gotten away from the light-polluted skies of the city, there would have been lots more stars visible in the shot. 📷 For this photo, I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Canon 50mm lens @ f/3.5, with a 10-second exposure @ ISO 400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #iss #internationalspacestation #nasa #pleiades