16 Feb 2019. At the mercy of the elements 💨 🌊 The distinctive shape of this rocky feature–one of the “Cathedral Rocks” near Kiama, Australia–has been formed and transformed by wind, water, sand, changes in temperature and possibly seismic shifts over many millennia. Although we think of such structures as firm and constant, anything at the mercy of the elements finds its daily timeline controlled by forces outside of itself. 😱😱😱😱 I know how the rock feels. When I left home on Thursday night to photograph the Milky Way rising behind Cathedral Rocks, the sky was cloudless, and the forecast was for it to stay that way until after sunrise. Based on that information, I spent a lot of the 90 km drive (approx. 56 miles) planning to shoot a time-lapse sequence of the Milky Way, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn rising from behind the rocks, over several hours. Less than half an hour after I arrived, though, clouds started moving in from the northeast, squelching all of those intentions entirely. 🌌 Fortunately, I still got a few usable photos, like this one showing the planet Jupiter (lower left) and the upper reaches of the Milky Way’s core rising from a cloud front on the horizon. Light from houses and street lamps nearby was enough to illuminate the rocks and water without me having to use one of the LED banks that I’d carried with me out onto the rock shelf. 📷 The equipment I was to capture this photo was a Canon EOS 6D camera, Canon 50mm lens @ f/2.5, 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 #kiama #cathedralrockkiama
15 Feb 2019. Crux on the rocks ✝️ In astronomy, an asterism is a prominent pattern or group of stars smaller than a constellation. The "Southern Cross" is an asterism within the constellation of Crux, and forms the shape of a cross in the sky, as you might have guessed. [For the record, I’ve always seen it more like the shape of a kite rather than a cross]. 🌌 Last night (Thursday 14th Feb) I shot this photo of the Southern Cross and a few other notable objects over this volcanic rock-based headland at Jones’ Beach, near the coastal town of Kiama, Australia. I have marked the main features for you on the photo and provided a clean copy as well. The feature that excites me the most is Omega Centauri, the globular star cluster at the upper left. I have seen it through an 8-inch reflector telescope, and it’s a beautiful sight to behold. You can see it without a telescope or binoculars, too. 📷 This photo is a single-frame image that I captured using a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Canon 40mm STM lens @ f/3.2, with an exposure time of 10 seconds @ 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 #crux #southerncross #etacarinae #kiama #jonesbeach
10 Feb 2019. Not a bad start! 🎉 I’m happy to be off and shooting for the 2019 Milky Way core season. The Milky Way is visible all year round, of course, but right now is the time of year when the dense central hub of our galaxy, the “core”, reappears in the early morning skies. Late last night (Sat 9th Feb) I drove south for about 100 km to a spot that I’ve heard so much about but never visited, Cathedral Rocks, near the coastal town of Kiama, Australia. 🌌👍 It’s a gross understatement to say that I struck gold by choosing this location. Not only did I have the famous rock formations to feature in my foreground, with the majesty of the galactic core rising in the southeast to dominate the frame, but I was treated to the presence of the planets Jupiter and Venus as they rose over the Tasman Sea. The intensity of Venus’ light is unmissable in the photo, shining both low in the sky and reflected off the waves breaking on the beach. The unexpected bonus for the night was the light from bioluminescent organisms in the water turning the waves a glowing blue colour. I’m ridiculously tired from staying out late and only getting a few hours of sleep, but it was so worth it! 📷 I shot this single-frame photograph with a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Canon 40mm f/2.8 STM lens @ f/2.8, 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 #bioluminescence #kiama
07 Feb 2019. It’s killing me! 🤯 Yes, the envy from seeing so many photos on social media of the Milky Way’s galactic core rising in the east not long before dawn is killing me. Many of my Aussie and Kiwi (i.e. the people from New Zealand, not their national bird) nightscape peers have been posting lots of drool-worthy shots over the past couple of weeks. It’s been too cloudy around my part of Australia and/or I haven’t been able to go without the sleep I’d miss out on by getting up so early on a weekday. That’s the reason I have this very much average image for you today, of Orion and Taurus in the western sky over Tuross Lake, Australia. 💫✨ The township of Tuross Head was behind my shooting position, and the street lights and house lights there were responsible for lighting up the far shore so brightly. Even with that light pollution present, though, you can still see the reflection of the stars Aldebaran and Elnath on the water’s surface. 📷 To capture this photo I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, A Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens set to f/2.4, and exposed the image for 15 seconds at 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 #taurus #tuross
03 Feb 2019. Forty years back 📆 Over the last few days, I’ve been scanning some of my old 35mm negatives and slides. Amongst the packets of film that I’ve been going through are lots of my early attempts at astrophotography. The three photos I’ve posted today (swipe through them to see all three) were shot by me four decades ago, in 1979. All of them were taken with what was then regarded as “fast” film, with an ISO rating of 400. Compare that with the ISO settings of 3200 & 6400 that I shoot at today! 📷 The first image is a 48-minute long star trails capture of the region around the South Celestial Pole. After that comes a 46-minute exposure of the constellation Orion. Finally, there’s a photo of me projecting the telescope’s view of the sun onto the back of a book. My older sister is holding the book for me. They aren’t colourful or exciting, but they are a helpful link for me between my middle-aged life now and my teen years. • • • • • @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 #film #blackandwhite #35mm #oldschool
26 Jan 2019. The moon and the masts 🌔 Distorted and misshapen by the effects of atmospheric refraction, the rising moon was a delight to watch as it climbed over the east coast of Australia last night (25th January). With the humidity level at about 80%, I wasn’t expecting to get such a sharp image of our planet’s natural satellite. I’m itching to get some photos of the stars rather than the moon, but there’s no hurrying the lunar cycle. 📷 For this photo I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Sigma 50-500mm lens zoomed up to 500mm, an aperture of f/7.1 and an exposure time of 0.5 seconds at ISO 1600. • • • • • @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 #moon #lunar #moon_awards @moon_awards #masts
25 Jan 2019. On the right track 🌏 As our planet Earth rotates each day, the Sun seems to rise each morning and set each night. Similarly, the stars we see in the evening make their way across our sky. If you want to photograph those twinkling specs of light you need to take very short exposures–of 15 to 25 seconds, depending on the lens you’re using–or else the stars will start to form trails, as seen in some of my recent images. ✨ Capturing longer images requires what’s called “tracking”, where the camera mount moves in sync with the sky so that the stars still look like points of light. If you get your tracking mount aligned correctly, you can take images with exposure times measured in minutes rather than seconds. ⏱ This image I’m posting for you today is one that was shot using a tracker, with an exposure time of two minutes. My alignment wasn’t perfect, and due to distortion caused by the camera’s lens (“coma” distortion), some of the stars look more like streaks than points. Still, I managed to capture the detail of some of the nebulae found in the constellation Orion. Hopefully, you can make them out, including the crimson arc known as Barnard’s Loop. 📷 For this photo, I mounted my Canon EOS 6D camera on an iOptron SkyTracker mount, and the camera was fitted with a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens set to f/2.2. As noted the exposure time was 120 seconds, and the ISO that I used was 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 #orion #ioptron #ioptronskytracker #barnardsloop #timeexposure
23 Jan 2019. Backlighting the lighthouse 🌕 Although it’s only a few days since I posted a moon photo, I was out to dinner with friends tonight and time caught me short when it came to selecting and processing something more starry. 🌖 The moon last night–22nd January–was only 3 percent past being full when I photographed it rising over the small lighthouse on Cape Bailey, near Kurnell, Australia. Despite the cloudless afternoon and my best plans to get photographs under clear skies, there was a band of cloud near the horizon that meddled with my mission. 🌙 The lighthouse is an unattended installation and only rises a few metres above the cliff top where it’s situated. The straight-line distance from where I had my camera to the lighthouse is a little under 7 kilometres (4.4 miles). 📷 I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and my Sigma 50-500mm zoom lens, set at a focal length of 500mm and an aperture of f/6.3. The exposure time was 0.8 seconds at an ISO of 1600.
20 Jan 2019. Round and round. Again. 🦟 🌡 I am so used to shooting my nightscape images in the autumn, winter and early spring months that I forgot to take something essential with me on this summer night in the first week of January. Insect repellant is a beneficial accessory if there are mosquitoes about and if you don’t enjoy being bitten by them. With none of the liquid in my kit, I took the only other measure I could and popped on a parka that lives in the back of my car. When the temperature is somewhere around 25 degrees C (77 F), and the humidity is in the low 70s, a parka isn’t what you want to be wear. Still, it kept the mosquitoes at bay. ⏱ I’ve already posted other photos that I took at this location on the same night, and most of those are single-frame shots. I set one camera up solely to shoot this star-trails scene, though, and let it run itself for 3.5 hours. The camera was set to take a 25-second exposure, close the shutter for 1 second and then capture another 25-second image, repeating the cycle until I turned off the camera. Even though it’s summer down here in Australia, the high level of humidity meant that I needed to fit my lens with a dew heater to keep condensation from building up on the front glass element. 📷 All up I shot 463 single frames over those 3.5 hours, then used the software “StarStaX” to make the final composite photo. For each of those shots, I had my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera mounted on a tripod and fitted with a Samyang 14mm lens set to f/2.8. As mentioned above, the exposure time for each frame was 25 seconds, and I set the ISO to 1600. @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 #startrailchasers #startrails #tuross
19 Jan 2019. 88% but headed for 100. 🌖 The moon was at 88% illumination last night (18th January) when I photographed it from my balcony in Miranda, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. That percentage is compared to the moon when it’s at its brightest, i.e. “full moon”. The sky behind the moon here is deep blue, rather than black, because the sun had only just set and there was still plenty of light around. 🌕🌑 This month’s full moon will happen on January 21st, and people in North and South America, Europe and western Africa will get to see the special treat of a totally-eclipsed moon. Folks looking skyward (and into a cloudless sky) in Central and Eastern Africa and Asia will see the moon partially eclipsed to some degree. 🙏 I hope that you’re in a location that is going to get to see this eclipse. I’m not, so I look forward to seeing your photos here on Instagram and other social media. 📷 This shot is a single-frame photo that I captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Sigma 50-500mm lens @ 500 mm @ f/8.0, using an exposure time of 1/320 second @ ISO 400. • • • • • #moon #lunar #moon_awards @moon_awards @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
18 Jan 2019. Magellanic Bridge 🌉 On the last night of my recent stay at the holiday town of Tuross Head, Australia, I set up one of my cameras to automatically take photos to create a star-trails image (that I’m yet to process and post). While that was happening, I was walking around in the dark, looking for other parts of the sky to photograph. I’d visited this bridge during the day time on a previous trip, so went there again on this night to see how I could use it in a composition. ✨🌌 The Magellanic Clouds–satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way–happened to line up just right over the bridge. The stillness of the water in Bumbo Creek provided a great mirror to reflect starlight from, and a little bit of illumination from an LED lamp helped make the bridge more visible. There was a lovely amount of green atmospheric airglow to provide a pleasant background colour to the scene. 📷 I created this photo by shooting ten overlapping images, then stitching those images into a vertical panorama using some software. For each of the ten individual images I used a Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Rokinon 24mm lens set to f/2.4, and an exposure time of 15 seconds per frame @ 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 #bridge #MagellanicClouds #LargeMagellanicCloud #LMC #SmallMagellanicCloud #SMC
15 Jan 2019. More than you first think 💫🌌 I love photographing the Southern Hemisphere’s stars, star clusters, nebulae, dust lanes and other night sky features being reflected off the surface of a pond, lake, river or the ocean. I managed to get all of those items in this image and to help you to identify them, I’ve included a version of the photo with some of these features noted. ✨ One of the heavenly wonders that I captured in the shot is the globular star cluster, Omega Centauri, which looks like a fuzzy star here, but is so much more. Situated about 15,800 light-years from us Omega Centauri (aka NGC 5139) is a gravitationally-bound conglomeration of approximately 10 million stars that would take 150 years to traverse at the speed of light. Omega Centauri can be seen with the unaided human eye and is best viewed using “averted vision”, which involves looking to one side of the object to see it better. 📷 As with a lot of my work, I captured this scene as a single-frame photo, for which I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, shot with a 15-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 #tuross #crux #southerncross #omegacentauri
14 Jan 2019. Between heaven and ocean 🌙 The moon set too late last night for me to stay out and get photos of the dark and starry heavens, so I settled for photographing the stars against the moonlit sky. Seeing that there was an electrical storm out over the Tasman Sea, I stopped in at the lookout at Stanwell Tops, New South Wales, Australia. The lookout there on Bald Hill gives fantastic views at any time of day. ⛈ Although shot at close to midnight, my photo displays a blue sky which at first glance makes it seem as if I took it during the day The stars are the giveaway that it was night-time, though. The Southern Cross is high up near the top-centre of the image, just above the Coal Sack Nebula. The globular star cluster Omega Centauri is close to the left-hand edge of the scene, about 1/3 from the top. The moon’s light did a great job of revealing the clouds, and the flash from the lightning has revealed the rain falling from the thunderclouds onto the ocean. 📷 For this single-frame photo, I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.2, with a 15-second exposure @ ISO 1600. • • • • • @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 #moon #lunar #moon_awards @moon_awards storeroom #lightning
12 Jan 2019. Braidwood Trails 💤 As much as I’d love to write a thoughtful and descriptive caption for this image, I’m a tad tired from not being well today, so will just say that I shot this about a week back, on January 4th, at Braidwood, Australia. 📷 I created the composite star-trails image by shooting 124 single photos, using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Samyang 14mm lens @ f/2.8. Each shot was exposed for 25 seconds @ ISO 800. After a few adjustments in Adobe Lightroom I used the free software StarStaX to combine the single images into the final whirly scene. • • • • • @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 #startrails #startrailsphotography #braidwood
10 Jan 2019. The International Space Station…and unwanted friends 🛰 On one of my nightscapades while holidaying last week, I drove to this farmland which has dark skies, as in Bortle Class 2. That’s very dark, indeed. My SkyGuide app let me know that the International Space Station (ISS) was due to fly over within a couple of minutes of my arrival, so I set up and started clicking away. This photo is a 15-second exposure, so the trail of the ISS isn’t very long, and about twenty seconds after this shot it moved into the Earth’s shadow and wasn’t visible any longer. 🚀🛸 Once I looked at the night’s shots in Lightroom, I saw that those wonderfully dark skies weren’t as free of man-made lights as I’d thought. I’d expected to see the trail of the ISS in the images, of course, but what I hadn’t planned on was catching the light from other satellites that were passing by. Seven other satellites, in total, including a synchronised pair. In the image next to the original I’ve included a marked-up version that shows all of the pesky streaks of light that were visible to the camera. So much for dark skies! 📷 The photo is a single-frame image that I captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 15 seconds @ 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 #satellite #iss #internationalspacestation #turosshead
09 Jan 2019. Return of the glow 🌊 One night on my recent holiday at Tuross Head, Australia, I stopped at one of the saltwater lakes in the area to get some photos of stars & other sky features reflected off the water’s surface. When I turned up at Tuross Lake at around 3:30 am I was happy to see that some bioluminescent organisms were present in the water. After photographing this phenomenon in September of 2018, I was keen to be able to do it again. 💦 I travelled light to this spot, with only a camera, tripod and remote shutter release in hand. As I found out, I also should have brought one of my LED lamps to provide some foreground lighting. Since I didn’t have any such light source with me, I’ve had to push up the shadows adjustment in this photo to show the small sandbar that I was standing on. Doing this has made the picture very noisy (in a digital photography sense) and not as clear as I like to produce. Despite that, though, you should be able to see the Large Magellanic Cloud up in the top of the photo, as well as the blue glow of the bioluminescent critters at the waterline. The shadowy figure on the left is me. I was using some plastic bottles to tip lake water onto the bio, making it more active. The purple-glowing spots in my shadow were caused by bioluminescence in the lake water that I’d scooped up into the bottles. 📷 This photo is a single-frame image that I took with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, using a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 20 seconds @ ISO 12800. • • • • • @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 #MagellanicClouds #LargeMagellanicCloud #LMC #bioluminescence #tuross
07 Jan 2019. A sliver before sunrise 😴 💤 Despite assuring myself & fellow photographer Ian Williams @imagesbyimw that I wasn’t going to do an all-nighter, I shot this image of the moon rising at Tuross Head at 4:35 am last Friday, January 4th, an hour before going to bed! I had set out at about 7:00 pm on the previous evening to shoot at Braidwood (see yesterday’s post), and since the skies were clear at Tuross when I got there after my 107 km (65 mi) drive home, I stayed out and shot this and a bunch of other photos. 🌙 The moon was only 5% illuminated & just over two days from the end of the current cycle. The sunrise was still about an hour away, but the light of our nearest star had already started to colour the morning sky. 📷 This photo is a single-frame image that I shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, using a Canon EF 24-105mm lens @ f/6.3, exposed for 6.0 seconds @ ISO 6400. • • • • • #moon #lunar #moon_awards @moon_awards #moonrise #astronomypicturesdaily #universetoday @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 #tuross #eurobodalla
06 Jan 2019. Braidwood-bound ☁️🌫 I’m back in Sydney (Australia) from my summer break on the south coast of my state of New South Wales. It’s often cloudy there at this time of year, and that was the case last Thursday night, January 3rd, so I drove inland and upwards to Braidwood, a rural town 107 km (65 mi) from where I was staying. Although it was above the coastal fog that had been hanging around for days Braidwood, at an elevation of 643 above sea level (2110 ft), still managed to get fogged in after a couple of hours due to the high moisture content of our summer air. 🌌 In the time that I had at Braidwood, I shot off a one-hundred-and-twenty photo star-trails compilation, as well as plenty of single-frame shots like this one that I’m posting today. The Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy is glowing in the top right-hand corner, offset against the starry band of the Milky Way that stretches from the old shearing shed up towards the top left of the shot. The Coal Sack Nebula, an expanse of dark gas that blocks the light of the stars behind it, is clearly visible above the feed silo in the bottom left-hand corner. The Southern Cross asterism is immediately on the left of the Coal Sack, and you can see the crimson colours of the Eta Carinae Nebula above and left of these. 📷 I shot this single-frame photograph with my Canon EOS 6D camera, through a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 15 seconds @ 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 #MagellanicClouds #LargeMagellanicCloud #LMC #braidwood
02 Jan 2019. Helpful Headlights 🚗 🚚 🚙 🚛 The spill of light from the headlamps of vehicles passing over the Tuross River Bridge on the Princes Highway near Bodalla, Australia, saved me from having to do any light-painting of the foreground for this photo. Moisture in the air close to the ground provided a lovely dispersion effect that has enhanced the colour and brightness of the stars in the Southern Cross, a little to the upper left of the tallest trees that you see here. Also brightened by the mist are the two “Pointers”, Alpha and Beta Centauri, located down and to the right of the same trees. 🌌 Seeming to waft high above the whole scene is the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy that is a companion of our much larger Milky Way. 📷 For this photo, I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera fitted with a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 15 seconds @ 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 #magellanicclouds #largemagellaniccloud #southerncross
01 Jan 2019. Stars, Streaks and a Flash 📆 Welcome to 2019! I hope that you saw in the New Year with people who are important to you. Mine was a low-key night as I’m still under the weather from a cold I picked up on my cruise before Christmas. ⏱ Today’s photo is from a short nightscape session I had on Friday night. For this shot, I lined up my camera so that Orion was positioned over these poplar trees next to the Princes Highway at Bodalla, Australia. The orange-red star Aldebaran, in Taurus, is to the left of the top of the tree and the Pleiades cluster is down to the left of that. 💫 While the shutter was open, a truck headed north on the highway with its headlights on high-beam, flooding the foreground area and leaving me thinking that the shot would be a write-off. The truck’s ultra-bright tail-lights left the red streaks you see at the lower right. A few seconds before the shutter closed, though, I saw a fireball falling to the northwest and hoped that I’d caught it. I’ve highlighted the fireball for you at the upper left. 📷 This photo is a single-frame image that I shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, using a Samyang 14mm lens @ f/2.8, exposed for 25 seconds @ 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 #meteor #fireball #orion