Nocturnal Harvest
While I was enjoying my time photographing the wonderful night I was afforded in mid-November this year near Harden, NSW, Australia, many of the local farmers were occupied with their wheat harvest. The lights of one of the massive pieces of agricultural machinery pointed in my direction as I took this photo of the Milky Way’s galactic core edging closer to the horizon.
The inherent haziness of the sky in the space between the horizon and roughly ten degrees above it made it impossible to get a sharp and detailed image of our galaxy’s dust lanes and dark nebulae. Still, I’m happy with how the overall scene looks.
This photo is a single-frame image, shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.0, using an exposure time of 10 seconds @ ISO 3200.
Milky Way Moos
Where else would you find cows but in the Milky Way? This pile of three cows marked the entrance to the Romani Pastoral Company’s property near Harden, NSW, Australia and seemed happy to pose for my photos while the Milky Way set behind them. Contented cows, you might say!
The Milky Way has a yellow/brown tint in this photograph, caused by the refraction of light by the Earth’s atmosphere, in the same way the moon looks yellowed when you see it close to the horizon. I was happy to get this end-of-season image of the Milky Way, having driven for over four hours to reach the location. I’m fortunate to live in this part of the world, where we can see and photograph the Milky Way’s core region from partway through January until almost the end of November each year.
I shot eighteen stacked frames using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera fitted with a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens to create the image I’m offering you today. For each of those shots, I opened the lens to f/2.5 and used an exposure time of 10 seconds @ ISO 6400.
The Hall and the Heavens
This abandoned building is tagged on Google Maps as “Cullinga Hall/School?” So far, I’ve not found any further details of the building’s history, but it’s a very photogenic structure that posed nicely for me when I visited last Monday night, 13th November. Located in the Riverina District of New South Wales, Australia, the old hall isn’t far from the towns of Wallendbeen and Cootamundra, in an area that farms wheat, canola, cereal crops, sheep, wool, fat lambs and cattle.
The Large Magellanic Cloud was prominent in the sky, seen here at the top-right corner of my photo. The second-brightest star visible in our planet’s night skies, Canopus, was sending forth its photons and appears here down the centreline of the shot. Atmospheric airglow tinted the sky a lovely green hue, which looks like a colourful canvas sprinkled with stars, even though the stars are much further away in space.
I captured this shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/3.2, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400, and I lit the foreground with two Lume Cube LED lamps.
In the Twilight Zone
I shot today’s photo last Monday night, 13th November, at 9:05 pm, seventeen minutes before the beginning of astronomical twilight*. Shooting then meant there was still sunlight refracting in the Earth’s atmosphere to make the sky bright enough to silhouette the horizon but not so much that the stars, dust and gas formations in the Milky Way couldn’t be seen. I planned to shoot this scene with the windmill being much more prominent in the foreground, but a barbed wire fence, lots of long and spiky grass and wheat, and a drainage ditch kept me from getting close enough to the structure to do so.
* Did you know there are three twilight periods, both after the Sun sets and before it rises? At sunset, “Civil twilight” begins, and the sky gradually darkens but is still bright enough for us to see without artificial lights such as headlights, streetlights, etc. Astronomers regard civil twilight as when the Sun is just below the horizon to when its centre is six degrees below the horizon.
“Nautical twilight” occurs when the Sun is between six and twelve degrees below the horizon following sunset or between twelve and six degrees below the horizon before sunrise. “Astronomical twilight”–my favourite kind of twilight–begins when the Sun is from twelve to eighteen degrees below the horizon after sunset or between eighteen and twelve degrees before sunrise.
Captured north of Young, NSW, Australia, I shot this scene with a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.8, using an exposure time of 8.0 seconds @ ISO 3200.
Imposter Syndrome
I’ve been wowed by the hundreds (thousands, more likely) of photos online in the past few days, showing the beauty of the major auroral event last Sunday night, 5/6 November. As per most Sunday nights, I was at home in Australia’s largest capital city, Sydney, with no view to the south and lots of light pollution, so I missed out on the skyborne light show. My photo today isn’t, sadly, from that auroral display. My shot was taken during a similar event in April of 2023. Call me an imposter for jumping on the Aurora bandwagon, but I had no other images to post. I captured this scene at the Blue Pool, one of the tourist attractions of Bermagui, on the southeast coast of Australia. The photo is a single exposure, shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/4.0, using an exposure time of 5 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Cloudy Water
The Murrumbidgee River flows for around 1485 km (923 mi) and is the second-longest river in Australia. I photographed the starry southern sky over and reflected in the river from the northern approach of the Taemas Bridge, about 40 km (25 mi) northwest of Australia’s capital, Canberra, on a night in mid-June of 2023.
Looking across the river in my photo, you can see the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds–satellite galaxies of our Milky Way–hanging listlessly over the rolling hills, with the larger of the two “clouds” reflected in the Murrumbidgee below. Also reflected in the water is Canopus, the second-brightest star visible in the Earth’s night skies, and a scattering of other stars from this region of the heavenly sphere. I hope to return to the bridge in 2024 and try to capture a “Milky Way arch” panorama.
Over the Falls
The shallow, dark waters pooled at the top of Carrington Falls, Australia, reflected the light emanating from the Eta Carinae region of the Milky Way, stretching upwards, as I photographed this scene in early September of 2023. Despite being a very popular hiking and picnic location, I had the hooting of owls, the rippling of the pools and the distant crashing of the waterfall to myself this Saturday night.
Since I didn’t have my panoramic tripod head with me, I resorted to first principles, using my camera and a standard tripod, plus good old dead reckoning to ensure I had good overlap between the nine frames that make up this vertical panorama. In the end, I misaligned things and came close to missing out on the lovely circle of stars near the bright-orange star Antares at the right-hand edge of the frame, but I’m pleased with the final result.
Lights
In mid-September this year, I ventured south to Gerroa, a lovely coastal location here in Australia, for what looks to have been my final Milky Way core photo session for 2023. The rock platform surrounding the headland at Gerroa has fascinating features that draw amateur and professional geologists and fossil hunters by day and keen nightscape photographers in the darker hours. You can see some of the tessellated features in the shallow rock pools that the rising tide filled during my time there.
At this time each year, you can photograph the Milky Way as it sinks towards the southwestern horizon, forming the arched shape I captured in this 55-frame panorama. Although the distant towns of Berry and Nowra are much smaller than the metropolitan areas of Kiama, Wollongong and Sydney to their north, they still pump out plenty of stray illumination in all directions, as you can see from the bright and white “light domes” along the distant horizon. The location is a 110 km (68 mi) drive from my home in Sydney but still far enough from civilisation to avoid such light pollution.
I shot the frames that make up the panorama using my Canon EOS 6D Mk I camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 3200.
Cliffhanger
My nightscape photography expeditions have been less frequent than I’d hoped for this year. With the Milky Way’s core almost gone until early 2024, this image I captured in mid-September might be my last shot of this part of the sky for 2023.
The starry band of the Milky Way was hanging over the top of the landform known as Black Head at Gerroa, Australia when I captured this 30-frame stacked image. I lit the cliff face with two Lume Cube LED lamps, and light spilling from the town of Nowra—23 km (14.3 mi) distant—was responsible for the backlighting of Coolangatta Mountain, at the bottom left of the scene and the waters of Berry’s Bay in between.
Night Falls
Today’s post is from a visit to Carrington Falls, in the Southern Highlands region of my state of New South Wales, Australia, early in September.
The Milky Way was moving towards being parallel with the southwestern horizon when I captured this three-frame vertical panoramic image at the top of the falls. Not far past the rocks and flowing pool in the photo’s foreground, the waters of the Kangaroo River reach the edge of the escarpment and plunge 160 metres (520 ft) to the valley floor below. On the horizon, you can see the distant glow of the town of Marulan, nearly 60 km (37 mi) away.
I used my Canon EOS 6 Mk II camera to capture the three images that make up the final panorama, coupled with a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 3200.
Gaseous Light and Rocks and Water
The most massive of the planets in our solar system, Jupiter, is one of the “gas giant” planets. As far as we know, Jupiter is almost wholly comprised of gases, and all that gas makes it an excellent reflector of the Sun’s light. After the Moon and Venus, Jupiter is the brightest object regularly visible in Earth’s night sky.
Jupiter had not long risen when I captured today’s photo of it ascending the sky off Gerroa, Australia, with its gorgeous glow reflected by the headland’s tidal rock pools. I lit the foreground with my LumeCube LED lamps, giving the rocks and gravelly beach a yellowed look, adding to the other-worldly feel of the entire scene.
I captured this single-frame image using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 3200.
Balancing Act
The 5%-illuminated Moon was slowly gliding down to the western horizon tonight, seemingly balancing on the boom of a construction crane a few hundred metres from my home. The Moon wasn’t as close as the crane, obviously, moving through space in its orbit around the Earth, nearly 399,000 km (248,000 mi) away. Lights from the intersection near the construction site provided plenty of glow to make the crane’s formwork visible.
While I enjoy the long car trips I take to get to dark skies for my Milky Way images, it was nice only to have to walk from my desk to our balcony to photograph this scene.
I shot this single-frame photo with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera attached to a Sigma 50-500mm f/5.6 lens @ 500 mm @ f/7.1, using an exposure time of 0.6 seconds @ ISO 1600.
Galaxy and Sanctuary
The Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy travelling through space with our Milky Way, looked like a blissful bloom as it hung over St Mark's Anglican Church at Currawong in New South Wales, Australia, in August of 2022. Estimated to be made up of over 20 billion stars and with a radius of around 32,000 light-years, this relatively small galaxy is roughly 160,000 light-years from Earth and is visible with the naked eye to Southern Hemisphere observers. Having seen the Large cloud and its companion, the Small Magellanic Cloud, I understand where the name came from.
The church at Currawong was built between 1918 and 1919, so it's young as far as "old" churches go. The bluestone granite blocks were quarried locally and formed into the walls of the building by volunteer labour on donated land.
I created this image by shooting twenty consecutive photos of the scene (10x lights, 10x darks), which I processed in Adobe Lightroom and then stacked using Starry Landscape Stacker. Each of the ten light frames was captured with a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 3200. The ten dark frames were shot with the same settings while the lens cap was in place.
Murky Molonglo Milky Way
Today's photo is the second I've posted from my visit to the abandoned Captains Flat railway line in the Monaro region of New South Wales, Australia. I'd scouted the location during the daytime a few months before making the long drive from my home on a Friday night in June 2023. Constructed in 1939, it's a credit to the architects and builders that the bridge is still standing, with the piers and girders in good condition. The same can't be said for the structure's rotting sleepers and rusting rails.
Although the sky looked free of clouds to my eyes, the scene my camera captured showed a thin moisture layer that discoloured the night's atmospheric airglow and changed the tones usually seen in the Milky Way's core region. I plan to return to the Molonglo River site sometime in the first half of 2024 to try to capture the same scene without the murkiness you see here.
Unlike my previous post from this site, today's photo is a stack of seven single-frame images, each captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.6, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 3200.
Seaside Cathedral
The two large basalt formations that reach skyward at Jones Beach, north of Kiama, Australia, are collectively called "Cathedral Rocks." I posted a photo of the smaller structure in July of this year, and I captured today's image of the larger "cathedral" under the rising Milky Way the same June night I shot the previously posted scene.
Light from the LED lamps I'd placed near the edge of the rock shelf that I stood on combined with the photons spilling from streetlights and homes in the suburb of Kiama Downs to illuminate the rocks, the distant headland and the water surrounding the rocky island.
The five single-frame photos I shot and then stacked to create this image were all captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/3.2, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.
More Mount Murray
Earlier this year, I shared a photo featuring the disused, ninety-one-year-old Mount Murray Railway Station under the rising Milky Way. That image was well received here and in a few railway groups on Facebook. While ferreting through my “WIP” folder (Work In Progress) in Adobe Lightroom this week, I remembered I’d shot another vertical panorama of the lovely old station when I visited the location early in June.
In today’s photo, we’re looking down the tracks towards the industrial city of Wollongong and its urban sprawl and busy shipping port, Port Kembla. The lights from my state’s third-largest city have rendered the sky above them white through the trees in the distance. Despite that glare, I still caught plenty of detail in the core region of the Milky Way.
I created this image by shooting seven overlapping frames, each captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.2, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Simply Starry
I get a lot of enjoyment out of creating images that show off the wonders of the night sky. Browsing through my posts, you’ll often see me feature the Milky Way’s galactic core or the enchanting dwarf galaxies known as the Magellanic Clouds. Now and then, I like to include the Moon in my shots, and far less often, I’ll give you a photo of the Sun that I’ve captured with my telescope.
Today, though, I’ve opted for a much simpler scene to post. This photo takes me back to being a boy and looking up at the dark sky when we were out of the city. I didn’t know any constellations or asterisms other than Orion or the Southern Cross, but looking up and encountering far more stars than I’d ever seen made me feel a sense of wonder. I hope I can imbue you with some of that wonder today.
My simple single, as I call such shots, was taken with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.2, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 12800.
On Its End At The End Of My Night
Midnight was only minutes away as I shot the eight frames I combined to create this tall, narrow image on a cold and clear night in June of 2023. Although the sky looked cloudless, my camera caught some thin cloud near the horizon that mixed green atmospheric airglow with the fading crimsons near the horizon, the last gasp of this night’s auroral activity. Those blended hues add extra interest to the sky while not distracting from the splendour of the number of stars visible in this dark sky location between Braidwood and Cooma in New South Wales, Australia.
In actuality, I shot nine photos to create this panorama, using a technique called “focus stacking” so that the grasses and fence in the foreground were as in focus as the starry sky above. I used my Canon EOS 6D camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.6 mounted on a Nodal Ninja 3 panoramic head for each of those nine photos. The exposure time was 13.0 seconds per shot, with the camera’s ISO set to 6400.
The Crown of Cuttagee
Cuttagee Beach is one of the dozens of beaches on the “Sapphire Coast” region of New South Wales, Australia, so named for the blue hues of the waters along that coast. Looking at this panorama that I shot in late April of 2023, the dominating colour is more green than blue, caused by what’s known as atmospheric airglow. Human eyes can’t see colour in low light, so to me, the shaded sky looked more “light black” than the distinct hues my camera caught.
Earlier in the night, the Aurora Australis had been very active, and I got photos that showed a vivid pink/red colour in the sky at a location north of this beach. The auroral activity had dropped off significantly when I was capturing the photos for this pano, but there’s a faint hint of pink on the horizon to the right of the centre, where the lights of beachfront houses are glowing. I might not have been able to see all of the colours my photo displays, but there were plenty of stars to look at, and the peace & quiet were soothing.
I shot this 44-image panorama with my Canon EOS 6D camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.4, using an exposure time of 13.0 seconds @ ISO 3200. The stitched panorama was a 1.38 GB file with dimensions of 21476 x 10738 pixels.
As it is in the Heavens.jpg
Please excuse my play on the line from The Lord’s Prayer that I’ve chosen as the title for today’s photo. Taken in April 2023 near Bodalla, Australia, this image made me think of how similar things on Earth can look to some of the immense structures in our Milky Way galaxy. Certainly, there’s a massive difference in scale between the tree’s dead, angular branches and the dark, angular shapes of what astronomers call “dust lanes.” Still, looking at the twisted shapes in the sky in the top-left of my photo, they look similar to the dead branches that frame them.
Or, perhaps, I overthink things! Whatever the case, looking at our universe through something more earthly increases my sense of wonder for creation.
This photo is a single exposure, captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.0, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 3200.
In the Valley of the Night
About two months ago, I spent the weekend in the southern tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia. Beyond the southeastern corner of those tablelands is the Araluen Valley, named for the town that occupies the plains therein. After a 300 km (186 mi) drive from home, I got a few night sky shots up on the high plains, then followed the very winding road down to Araluen. Apart from a couple of test shots, the only photos I took on this visit were the forty that make up this panorama.
My camera caught the overall bottle-green colour of atmospheric distortion across the sky. When you look at the right-hand half of the pano, where the arch of the Milky Way peters out, you can see a lighter shade of green, indicating more intense photochemical activity in the atmosphere. The reddish-pink hues closer to the horizon are from the Aurora Australis, which was very active that night. I was down in a valley when I should have been up on the high plains or up a mountain getting aurora photos! I reckon the aurora was worth missing, considering how my panorama worked out!
I mentioned above that I captured forty single-frame photos to create the panorama you see here. For each image, I used my Canon EOS 6D camera fitted with a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Photo-friendly Farmer
It’s a pleasant surprise when someone takes an interest in what you’re up to, standing next to a tripod on the edge of a farm next to a dirt road at the back of beyond on a mid-winter night. The farmer who pulled up his utility when he saw someone parked on the access road to his hay shed on the evening I shot this photo was keen to know why a guy was wandering around in the dark right next to that hay shed. “Photos,” I said. “Night sky photos.”
After he saw my camera and some of the images I’d already shot, the farmer gave me his blessing and drove off into the night. I was glad for the interaction but was racing against the clock. The 83%-illuminated Moon was due to rise in about 45 minutes, so I had to get on with things. It took me quite a few test shots before I was happy with my foreground lighting (but I’m still unhappy with it) and pressed ahead to capture the remaining photos that make up this vertical panorama.
I captured nine single-frame images to make up this final photo, using my trusty old Canon EOS 6D camera and Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Green All ‘Round
Even if such things were within my control, I couldn’t have done a better job of matching the sky colour to that of the grassy hills at Bodalla, Australia, when I captured this image in April of 2023. Atmospheric airglow can show itself in various colours, and green is the one I’ve seen the most in my night sky photos. Despite how black or charcoal grey the sky might look to our human eyes, there’s plenty of colour to capture in photos. Shining through that “background” hue (the airglow is actually happening in front of the stars and not behind them), the light of the billions of members of our Milky Way galaxy dot the dome of night. Dark dust and gas strewn between the stars and us on Earth make mottled smudges and smears on the heavenly canvas.
I shot this scene with a 14 mm wide-angle lens on my camera, making the corners of the photo look stretched and distorted. Trying to compensate for this distortion, I leaned towards the tree while attempting to stand still for the twenty-five seconds that the shutter was open. Looking at the result here, I see that I leaned too far!
The 14 mm lens I mentioned above was attached to my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and set to f/3.5. I chose an exposure time of 25 seconds, set the camera’s ISO to 6400, and used two Lume Cube LED lamps to light the foreground.
Open-air Cathedral
Formed by the cooling of lava flowing to the sea millions of years ago and shaped by the erosive actions of the sea since then, the basalt columns at Cathedral Rocks near Kiama, Australia, have a majestic and inspiring presence. The outcrop in my photo today is the smaller of the two “cathedrals” at this location, yet it’s as fascinating and photogenic as its larger sibling.
The Milky Way was making its way from the horizon towards the zenith, looking down on these ancient rocks as I shot multiple images to create this vertical panorama. Capturing stars in photos requires a longer shutter speed than used in daylight photos, and this has the added attraction of rendering the waves as smooth and blurred patches of white to contrast with the harshness of the rocks. The lights of two ships heading north to Port Kembla made bright dents on the otherwise straight horizon.
I shot and then stitched five overlapping frames to create this final image. Each photo was captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 20 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Wagonga Wharf
The coastal town of Narooma, in my state of New South Wales, Australia, is built on the shores of the Wagonga Inlet, a 6.9 square-kilometre lake that empties into the Tasman Sea. In the northwest reach of the inlet is the Wagonga Wharf, where I shot this photo of the Milky Way riding high over the still waters in early July 2023. The wharf was first used as an unloading point for sailing vessels and small steamers in the 1860s. The current structure was built in 1996.
It was too late at night for me to capture the Milky Way’s core rising over the hills, so I shot the frames to create this tall and narrow image of the Milky Way higher up in the sky over the gorgeous spot. I think I can still hear the silence of the locale when I look at my photo!
To create this vertical panorama, I shot seven overlapping frames with the camera focused on the sky, then one extra image with the wharf in focus. I blended the images in Photoshop and a stitching program to generate what you see here. For each of the eight photos that comprise the final scene, I used a Canon EOS 6D camera (Mark 1) and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.0, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 3200.
Skyward Spindliness
These sinewy and spindly poplars, with their leaves now dead and shedding, caught my eye while I was looking for a shooting location near Bodalla, Australia, in April of 2023. The long and thin branches seemed to intersect the Milky Way’s fine dust lanes, and I imagined that those terrestrial and celestial elements were intertwined in some bonding ritual.
Stands of poplars are a common sight in along roads in the Australian countryside, despite the trees not being native to our land. The trees were imported from Europe by earlier settlers, but the sky they rise in front of is distinctly that of a Southern Hemisphere location. Across the fields behind the poplars are lights indicating the homes of local farmers, probably wondering who the strange man with the LED lamps was off in the darkness. I hope they took the time to look up and see the magic overhead!
I captured this single-frame photo with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f2.8, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 3200.
A Rookie Error…Ten Years In
Later this year, I'll mark ten years of shooting nightscape photos with digital cameras. I started taking pictures of the night sky with my mum's black-and-white film camera in 1978 and continued for a couple of years until study demands at school and other interests took over. In 2013, after devouring many online tutorials, I began shooting night sky photos with my Canon EOS 7D digital SLR.
Now, ten years down the track and with over 110,000 images under my belt, it's humbling to know that I'm still learning and still capable of making basic errors. The panoramic photo I'm posting today is a heartbreaking example of making a "rookie error" long after I should be doing such things. Created from forty-one single-frame images, this photo captures the Milky Way arched over the Princes Highway near Bodalla, Australia, in early July 2023.
Despite the remoteness of the location, the highway was quite busy on the night, and I had to re-take several frames due to car or truck headlights shining straight into the lens and ruining the shot. When I got home and loaded the images onto my Mac, I saw that the lens hadn't been focused on the stars! That is a definite rookie error. I'd checked and rechecked my focus several times before taking the shots for the panorama, but I must have bumped my lens sometime after the first row of twelve because all photos from that point on have blobs instead of pinpoint stars. "Live and learn" is the expression, I think.
I captured each of the 41 shots used in this panorama with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.5, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Wonders Through the Haze
Airborne moisture and a hazy horizon made it difficult to get a sharp and clear image of the Milky Way rising when I visited Cuttagee Beach, Australia, in late April this year.
Despite those challenges, I caught some of the majesty of our home galaxy’s core region as it climbed the sky. A prominent feature of this region of the sky is the Lagoon Nebula, aka M8, an interstellar cloud that shows in my photo as a distinctly pink blob about one-third of the way up from the bottom of the shot. At the bottom right, you can see a reflection of the yellowed glow of the Milky Way’s core area.
Due to how much the hazy conditions dimmed the sky, I pushed my camera’s sensitivity setting, the ISO, up beyond what I normally use for nightscape photos. I shot nine images in succession using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f2.2, with an exposure time of 8.0 seconds @ ISO 12800. The nine single shots were then edited in Adobe Lightroom and stacked using Starry Landscape Stacker.
Fruitful Sleeplessness
I didn't plan to wake up at 3:45 this morning, unable to get back to sleep before my working day started, but some ongoing abdominal pain took charge, and that's what time my day started. Our winter in Sydney, Australia, has been unusually dry this year, and our skies have been clear for weeks now. Since I was forced to be awake, I made the most of things and captured some shots of Jupiter, the Moon and the Pleiades star cluster looking delightful in the pre-dawn sky.
I took this photo with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/3.2, using an exposure time of 2.0 seconds @ ISO 200.
Far for Fog
My wife and I spied the windmill in today’s photo in mid-April while driving south from our holiday spot at Tuross Head, NSW, to Tathra, another of the beautiful coastal towns in this part of Australia. After dark, I headed back to the spot a few days later, knowing that the windmill would be in the perfect position to feature it against the Milky Way rising in the distance.
With dinner eaten, my camera and LED lamp batteries charged and several layers of clothes to keep me warm, I completed the 100 km (62 mi) drive. I arrived to discover that the windmill and everything for about 500 metres around it was covered in fog. There was next to no breeze, so the mist sat heavy in the little gully and did a fine but unwanted job of reflecting my LED lamps’ light at me and making the Milky Way hard to see.
You can make out the Milky Way’s core region peeking above the horizon to the left of the windmill’s tower, showing an orange glow due to atmospheric refraction, in the same way that the sun and moon look extra-golden as they rise.
This photo is a single-frame image, shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/3.2, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.