A handful of sheep stood atop this hill, silhouetted by the lights of the rural city of Goulburn, Australia, while I photographed the starry and cloud-free sky at the Taralga wind farm in mid-November of this year. High overhead and looking like a tuft of wool, cut free and discarded by a shearer’s blades, the amorphous glow from the billions of stars forming the Large Magellanic is the standout feature of today’s photo.

The background sky is showing a purplish tint, caused by the presence of what scientists call “airglow” in the Earth’s atmosphere, which human eyes cannot see, sadly. Dark nebulae in the Milky Way show themselves as dimmer patches in the sky near the horizon, as they block the light from stars more distant than these enormous bodies of gas and dust.

I shot two overlapping frames to create this final image, using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II Digital SLR camera fitted with a Sigma 35 mm wide-angle lens. Each photo was taken using the same settings, which were a shutter speed of 8.0 seconds, a lens aperture of f/1.6, and an ISO selection of 6400.

Although I have visited this area on the south coast of my state of New South Wales, Australia, since late 1975, it is only in the last five or so years that I’ve been making my way there to shoot nightscape photos. The old tree that I’ve included here in today’s photo has been the foreground feature for plenty of the shots I’ve taken on the access road to the town of Tuross Head. Thinking about it now, I don’t reckon I ever paid the tree any attention until I started to use it in my photos, but on each visit now I check to make sure that it’s still standing.

The glory of being able to shoot in the dark skies like what the far south coast of New South Wales offers is something I hope I never take for granted. You can see so much of the dark dust and gas structures present in the Milky Way, as well as the seemingly countless stars that paint the darkness with brilliant flecks of beauty, even without a camera, binoculars or a telescope. Add to that some naked-eye-visible planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, and you have ample reason to want to stand in a field on a cold night, as I did in mid-July this year, capturing this scene.

The image is a vertical panorama, created by stitching together five original frames, each of which I captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/3.5, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.

This post is my first in nearly six weeks, due to bad weather (the grey dome that seems to follow me around), busyness in my business, Christmas, and some time away with my wife. I hope to use my photos of the night sky's wonders to bring some wonder, light, and even joy into your lives during this current circuit of the Sun.

My initial post for 2021 is from a location where I cut my teeth on digital nightscape photography in 2013 and 2014, Tuross Head, on Australia's south-east coast. Over thirty years before then, I was shooting black-and-white star trails photos at Tuross during my mid-late teen years.

This heritage-listed church hasn't heard worshippers' singing or prayers for several decades but is a landmark still beloved by locals and the region's many holidaying visitors. The narrow opening in the persistent cloud cover only lasted long enough to shoot thirty images, including eight that I used to create this vertical panorama. The portion of the Milky Way included in the photo stretches from the constellation of Carina, just above the church's spire, up through Canis Major and just squeezing in Orion near the top of the scene.

To shoot each of the eight images in the final panorama I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/3.5, using an exposure time of 30 seconds @ ISO 6400.

My previous photo was called "Three Galaxies. Three Planets", and in the text, I noted that two of the galaxies in the title were the "Magellanic Clouds". Today's image features those two dwarf galaxies in more detail as I captured them in the sky over the Tasman Sea off Seven Mile Beach, NSW.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is estimated to contain between a few billion and ten billion stars, and have a diameter of around 30000 light-years. Its sibling, the Small Magellanic Cloud, measures approximately 7000 light-years across and contains possibly several hundred million stars.

Above the Small cloud, you can see the globular star cluster 47-Tucanae, and if you zoom in on the Large Magellanic Cloud, you'll see a green blob that is known to astronomers as the Tarantula Nebula.

Although I could have fit this scene into one wide-angle photograph, I shot four overlapping images and stitched them together during processing. I took four single frames with a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.0, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 6400.

The 30th day of June is the final day of the Australian financial year, which often means a last-minute rush of people and businesses wanting their IT problems solved by their friendly “Always Apples” support technician, i.e., me! That tug on my time, as well as a few cloudy nights, has seen me trapped at home, wishing I was out photographing the night sky.

Fortunately, though, I did get some time out last Thursday night, 25th June. I spent more of the session driving compared to how long I got to shoot photos, but some of the images I captured made that ratio worth enduring. This vertical panorama, created from shooting sixteen overlapping frames, shows why I was willing to be tired the next morning.

The road, fences, paddocks and mountainside in the foreground are all lit by light pollution from the nearby city of Wollongong, and the cloud hovering over the mountain is illuminated by the rural town of Nowra, around 30 km (18 mi) to the southwest. Jupiter and Saturn are prominent in the upper left-hand corner of the scene, and the globular cluster Omega Centauri is on the right and about one third up from the bottom of the frame.

I shot the sixteen photos that make up this panoramic image using m Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.8, using an exposure time of 10 seconds @ ISO 3200. I didn’t have my panoramic head with me, so I used dead-reckoning to calculate the overlap needed for the photos.

There is a habit that’s overcome me on my nocturnal adventures. No matter how late the hour, or how long the trip home will take me, I have to sneak one last look at the sky before I get into my car. I could have taken only a handful of photos, or it could have been hundreds, but I still need that one last look. If clouds have muscled in on the unspoilt heavens, or if the view is as clear as it ever could be, that one last look is a must.

So it was on this night when the Milky Way was glorious, and the planet Jupiter owned the sky between that galactic gem and the horizon. I took my one last look, a little after 1:00 am. Moonlight, the need for sleep, the restrictions of the pandemic and uncooperative weather have kept me from seeing this unfettered view for too many weeks. It’s good that I had my camera with me to capture this one last look.

I shot this photograph at Seven Mile Beach National Park in my state of New South Wales, Australia. I used my reliable Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.

I chose the title for today’s photo because of how blessed I feel to be able to photograph scenes like this, and for the opportunities that I get to try to pass on that thrill to others.

The time was a little after 4:15 am, one Saturday morning in July, as I sat on the sand at the edge of Tuross Lake (Australia), taking in the serenity and doing my best to capture the scene with my camera, to enjoy again when I like.

Bioluminescent marine organisms in the shallow, sandy water gave away their positions by their telltale blue glow, seen as a stripe near the bottom of my photo. The king of all planets, the gas-giant Jupiter makes two appearances in this image, dominating the sky with its bright orb, as well by its stretched reflection atop the lake. The Milky Way’s stars, nebulae, gas clouds and dust lanes stain the sky above the horizon as well as the water below, with each apparition heading for the other as the Earth turned on its axis. Above and to the right of Jupiter, you can see our Solar System’s next-biggest planet, Saturn, standing out against the stars.

To create the image that you’re viewing, I shot nine overlapping photos that I then stitched together in software. For each of those original individual images, I used a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.8, with an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 6400.

It’s a shame that the time of year has passed for shooting these vertical panoramas featuring the Milky Way standing on-end. I’ve been luckier than many Australians, particularly in the state of Victoria, been able to move outside of a small radius from my home. Many of the photographers who inspire and encourage me have been in lock-down for many months and haven’t had the chance to stand under the night sky, let alone to photograph it.

Today’s image was captured in July, on the ocean rock shelf at Gerroa, Australia, during one of my crazy one-night driving trips. The horizon is alight with the glow from street lights and other artificial illumination from towns along the coast, places that were only dimly lit and sparsely populated when I was a kid in the 1970s. Despite that, I was well able to capture the stars, planets, nebulae and dust lanes visible in this stretch of the sky in the Southern Hemisphere.

From the crimson-coloured Eta Carina Nebula low in the sky over those light-polluted towns, up through the Milky Way’s galactic core area in the top one-third of the shot, there are innumerable celestial objects visible in my photo. The two gas-giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, can be seen in the top left-hand corner of this scene, standing off from the central band of the Milky Way’s streak upon the heavenly dome.

I shot ten overlapping single-frame photos to create this composite image, capturing each of those frames using my Canon EOS 6D camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.0, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 3200.

It’s hard to beat dark, clear nights and a sharp lens for capturing the non-starry details of the Milky Way’s dust lanes and dark nebulae. The night that I photographed this scene, in late July of this year, was one of those times, and the Sigma 35 mm lens that I had mounted on my camera was the perfect tool to make the most of it.

Of course, the brightness of the massive conglomeration of stars that makes up the Milky Way’s galactic core shows up well in such a photo, but that’s not what my eyes were first drawn to when I saw this image come together. Those dark features hide estimated millions of stars (billions?), which makes me wonder how bright the sky would look should the dust and gas somehow drift off into the wider universe.

The planets Jupiter and Saturn are glowing to the upper-left of the Milky Way, and I caught the Southern Cross and several other familiar features in the lower half of the image. The lights on the horizon are those of coastal towns that are over 30 km distant from the rocky beach and headland at Gerroa, Australia, the location where I captured this scene.

This style of image is a called a vertical panorama (or “vertical pano”) that I created by shooting twenty single frames, in two columns that each contain ten photos. These individual images were then blended–“stitched”–to make the final image. I captured each of the twenty single shots using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 6400.

Fans of the claymation short films, “Wallace & Gromit”, will tell you that it’s the Moon–and not the Milky Way–that’s made of cheese. There was a proverb, from the year 1546, that spoke of the Moon being made of green cheese. Apparently, this saying was used at the time to describe people who would be so gullible as to believe such a thing.

I admit that it’s self-evident that the Milky Way is made of milk, of course! The long-defunct cheese factory in my photo, atop a small rise next to the Princes Highway at Bumbo, on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, gave me the inspiration for the name of today’s nightscape photo. The idea of photographing the former fromage factory, under the Milky Way, came from a friend I was visiting during June of 2019 on a long-weekend break on the coast. At around 1:00 am on my last night in the region before heading north to my home in Sydney, I visited the spot and captured the photos I used to create this vertical panorama. The overly-bright looking Milky Way is due to a thin fog that was moistening the sky at the time.

To get the eight individual frames that make up this composite photo I used a Canon EOS 6D camera fitted with a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, mounted on a Nodal Ninja panoramic tripod head. I selected an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400 for each shot.

The St Stephens Anglican Church at Wayo, in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. The site was donated by a local landowner for use as a church and cemetery back in 1866. The current building’s stone structure was erected in the 1880s.

As enduring as the stony sanctuary may be, it is dwarfed and humbled under the immensity and timelessness of the Milky Way. This image was one of a number that I shot during a visit in May of 2019, on a night when the atmospheric airglow was a mix of green and orange. Those colours are evident in the background sky in my photo.

To create this vertical panoramic image, I took eight overlapping photos. After a few adjustments in Adobe Lightroom, I used the stitching software “Autopano Pro” to merge those eight frames into the final composition. For each of the single images, I used my Canon EOS 6D camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, choosing an exposure time of 15 seconds, with the 6D’s ISO set at 6400.

With the cloud-cover that’s been a regular feature in my area for several weeks, and the full moon’s light washing out the Milky Way’s details in the early morning sky, what’s a photographer to do but draw from their reserves?

Today’s image is from May of 2019, taken near the rural city of Nowra, Australia, showing the Milky Way’s core rising over the distant Coolangatta Mountain and its surrounding dairy country. One challenge with nightscape photography–well, with any style of photography–is to be creative with how you frame your shots. Rather than having the Milky Way’s core in the sky with only the ground to compare it to, I used an overhanging pine tree’s branches and fronds to obscure the sky just a little, trying to create a feeling of the trees revealing the heavenly wonders on display. I think I managed to get it just the way I wanted it, in the end.

The vertical panorama was created by photographing eight overlapping images that were then edited in Adobe Lightroom, followed by stitching into the final single image using the now-discontinued software Autopano Pro. For each of those eight photos, I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.8, using an exposure time of 8.0 seconds @ ISO 6400.

I find it easy to imagine the people building this church, which was finished in 1903, using the line of the rising Milky Way to set the angle for their little building’s roof gable. There wouldn’t have been as much man-made dust in the air nor light pollution to dim their view back then, giving the locals an unobstructed vista of the heavens on a cloudless night.

Mind you the air was clear and the night quite dark when I visited the small sanctuary in April of 2019, evidenced by how much of the fine details in the Milky Way’s dust lanes my photo has captured. The colours of a number of the nebulae in the star-forming region of Rho Ophiuchi have also shown up nicely in the photo. Not visible in the photo, and certainly lost to my eyes on the night, is the cap for one of my lenses, dropped as I was stumbling through the darkness, looking for an interesting composition to shoot. Perhaps if I make the 400+ kilometre round-trip back there one day, I might find my piece of protective plastic still laying in the grass.

I used nine separate overlapping photos to create this composite “vertical panorama” image. My Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, fitted with a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.8, using an exposure time of 6.0 seconds @ ISO 6400, did a splendid job of sucking as much light out of the sky as possible to record each of those nine frames.

With the Milky Way’s galactic core now in the part of the sky where the sun is, it’s time to edit and post photos that I’ve shot throughout 2019 but not yet published. I will still try to get out and photograph the night magic of our southern summer, but with the craziness that leads up to Christmas, I’ll probably have lots of family and work commitments to keep me otherwise occupied.

During one of my trips to the farmlands of Goulburn, Australia, back in April, I shot the twelve photos that make up this vertical panorama of the Milky Way rising over and dwarfing the old windmill on Braidwood Road. I’m still surprised at how much of the fine details of our galaxy’s dust lanes and dark nebulae I managed to capture with exposure times of only 6.0 seconds per shot. I didn’t use any image stacking, but I did make sure that my lens was focussed as sharply as I could get it!

I photographed the original twelve single-frame images using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.4, with an exposure time of 6.0 seconds @ ISO 6400. For the photo nerds, no, I didn’t use a panoramic head, I used good old guestimation to get the right coverage of the field of view.

Something that amazes me is the fact that you can see details of the bright, starry galactic core of our Milky Way, reflected off the water. Those photons have travelled about 27,000 light-years across space but still have enough energy to bounce off the water’s surface. Single stars are mirrored, too, like the blue star on the middle right. Its reflection is far more prominent than the original blue dot itself. This photo was captured at Black Head, a landmark of the town of Gerroa, on Australia’s south-east coast.

I used a Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Canon 40mm STM lens @ f/2.8, for an exposure length of 10 seconds @ ISO 12800.

Luckily the wind that had been blowing for the previous two days abated enough for me to get some reflections of stars in the bottom-right of this pano, although they’re still not sharp. I actually got the stars of the Southern Cross reflected, and their colours show up much more prominently on the water’s surface than they do in the sky.

Look how much detail there is in the galactic core, including the “dancing horse” or “dark horse” nebula, as well as other dust lanes around the galactic centre. You can see the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies at the lower left, above the bright glow from the lights of the nearby HMAS Albatross naval aviation base. Mars is a prominent feature, and Jupiter’s white light is disappearing into the trees about one third down on the right.

A total of nine overlapping images were used to create this image, each of which I shot with a Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Samyang 14mm XP lens set at f/2.8. The exposure time for each frame was 25 seconds, with an ISO setting of 6400. I processed the panorama using the stitching software Autopano Pro.

I’ve used poplars to frame the Milky Way in several shots over the past four years, and I continue to find them useful. Perhaps it’s because they’re not native trees to Australia, or because they are much taller than other trees of the same width. The warped perspective from using a wide-angle lens seems to be bending the trees towards the mass of light and gravitational attraction present in the galactic core. The location, southwest of Nowra, Australia, was another gem with clear skies, no wind and only three cars passing me in the two hours that I was lurking in the dark with my camera. I just managed to sneak Jupiter into the right-hand edge of the shot, but Mars and its blazing orange light dominate the relatively empty section of sky at the top left. This shot doesn’t quite nail the alignment I was after, and I didn’t manage to get the lighting even across all of the poplars, so I hope you find beauty and interest in it.

I used the app Autopano Pro to stitch together five single, overlapping photos to create this final vertical panorama. For each photo, I used the following equipment and settings: Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/2.8, 25-second exposure @ ISO 6400.

Take your pick, if you please, as to which centreline my title is referring to. The centreline of the Braidwood Road, or the centreline of the sky, in the form of the Milky Way? It took me several stops to find a location where this road lined up with the Milky Way in just the way I wanted. I was fortunate to have only one vehicle pass through while I was shooting here, which isn’t usually the case on this road. On weekends it’s particularly busy, so maybe it was quiet due to this being on a weeknight.

The leaves on the trees have been blurred here due to the exposure time of 30 seconds for each photo and the strong wind that was blowing. Mars is very bright up at the top of the picture, but still not at its brightest for this year. If you know the southern skies at all, you might be able to make out the Southern Cross towards the bottom, next to the dark area known as the Coal Sack Nebula.

Seven photos were taken to create this final image, with each picture in the sequence overlapping the one before it. The settings I used for each shot were: Canon EOS 6D camera, Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, 15-second exposure @ ISO 6400.

My wife’s sister and her husband live near the rural city of Lismore, Australia. Their property is in a place where there’s very little light pollution so I only had to walk out to their driveway to find a spot to shoot the Milky Way when visiting them a few years back. What a change that was from my usual expeditions of hundreds of kilometres on Friday or Saturday nights!

Amongst the 100 or so shots I captured that night was this seven-image panorama, showing the Milky Way standing almost vertical over their fruit and vegetable garden. The orange fruit on his citrus tree adds some colour to this shot that I don’t normally see in a foreground. Just above and to the left of that tree you can see the Southern Cross and Pointers, with the planet Saturn showing as a white spot on the neck of the Dark Horse nebula.

Created from 7 single frames, each captured with Canon EOS 6D, Samyang 14mm @ f/2.4, 25 sec @ ISO 6400.

The predominant green colour of the background sky in this image is the result of the atmospheric phenomenon called “airglow”. To my eyes, the background sky colour looked grey rather than black–a sure sign of the presence of airglow. Our digital cameras excel at seeing and recording the shades of the night that we don’t discern, and this photo is a solid example of that difference.

Can you see orange-brown hues in the sky in the top two-thirds of the image, looking like bruises on the dermis of the heavenly dome? These peculiar patches were caused by the fog that came and went during the couple of hours I was shooting here, mostly hampering but occasionally enhancing my photos. The brilliant glow from Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet, has been diffused but brightened by the same airborne moisture. That accounts for the large white spot in the sky that’s roughly half-way down my image.

Dominating the foreground is the frame of the tired, expired and lonely tree that was so grand, and seemed to beckon to me, pleading to be featured in a photograph. Without the LED torch that I used to illuminate the tree and the paddocks, all you would see here would be the silhouette of this deceased and exhausted patriarch of the countryside.

The photo is another example of a “vertical panorama”, an image that has been created by shooting multiple frames, covering the view from the horizon to the zenith, which I then blended, or “stitched”, into the final image. I captured each of the seven single frames using a Canon EOS 6D camera, with a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f2.4, exposed for 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.

I created this vertical pano using eleven overlapping photos, providing enough coverage to capture the Milky Way and its galactic core, accompanied by Jupiter and Saturn, rising over the Tasman Sea at Gerroa, Australia. A bonus was capturing some of the little pools of water that were reflecting the stars.

I shot the 11 single-frame photos that make up the final panorama using a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera fitted with a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.4. For each shot, I had the camera set to an ISO value of 6400 and exposed each shot for 8.0 seconds.

The movie “Interstellar” came to mind after I noticed how the use of a wide-angle lens had made the trees at the bottom of my photo look like they’re bending in towards the massive amount of gravity present in the Milky Way’s galactic core. The fields and farmhouse also seemed reminiscent of that movie, although I was fortunate to not encounter any mega dust storms in the area around Jamberoo, New South Wales, Australia.

The photo is a vertical panorama that is made up by taking overlapping images and combining them in a process called “stitching”. I shot nine photos, starting with my camera pointing a little towards the ground and facing to the southwest. Between each shot I moved the camera upwards by 15 degrees, using a panoramic head to do so. Nine shots, each spaced fifteen degrees apart, gives a total sweep of 135 degrees of sky. If I’d shot another four photos I would have covered the view from horizon to horizon, and then some.

Jupiter, our solar system’s most massive planet, is off at the right-hand edge of the photo and Mars is on the left, not far out from the treetops there. The glow on the horizon at the bottom of the picture is from the city of Nowra and the white, washed-out area at the very top of the photo is from the industrial city of Wollongong, about 30km to the north.

I used the following camera equipment and settings to take the nine shots that comprise the panorama: Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Rokinon 24mm lens set to f/2.4, exposing each shot for 13 seconds at an ISO of 6400.

Jupiter, Saturn & Mars were lined up in the eastern sky when I captured this scene. The location is Jerrara, a dairy farming area on the southeast coast of Australia and a little over an hour’s drive from my home in the southern suburbs of Sydney.

The vertical panorama was created from four overlapping images, each shot with a Canon EOS 6D Mark II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, for an exposure time of 13-seconds @ ISO 6400.

Our solar system’s most massive planet, Jupiter, was slipping towards the western horizon when I captured this scene at around 12:30 am on July 14 of this year. There was a stiff breeze blowing across the top of this man-made pond, causing the water to be anything but smooth, and so diffusing the reflection of Jupiter’s light. That light had travelled across close to 737 million km (458 million mi) of space to reach the pond’s shimmering surface before bouncing the few metres up to my camera.

Dwarfing Jupiter in size, magnetic field, brightness and every other aspect is the central band and galactic core of our Milky Way galaxy, owning the top 1/3 of my photo. The sky was exceptionally clear and dark on this night, enabling me to capture lots of fine details in the wisps and filigrees of the Milky Way’s “dust lanes”.

This photo was created from nine overlapping frames. I shot each of those individual photos with a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 15 seconds @ ISO 6400. I used a Nodal Ninja 3 panoramic head, tipped on its side, to take the nine photos with enough overlap between them to create a smoothly stitched vertical panorama.

In July of 2017 I visited this level crossing on a rural railway line and captured a couple of vertical panoramas. It’s probably too small to see here but I caught a meteor as it flashed across the Milky Way’s core region, just underneath the “Dark Horse” nebula, aka the “Galactic Kiwi” for we Southern Hemisphere folk.

This vertical panorama was created using nine overlapping images that were each shot with a Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400.

The Milky Way’s galactic core is unmissable in this image, with its beautiful glow and obscuring bands of dust and dark gas dominating the upper right-hand quarter of the frame. Jupiter’s stark white orb is also in the same sector of my shot. The two blots of yellow on the horizon indicate the locations of the city of Goulburn and the town of Marulan, situated 85 km and 65 km distant, respectively. Yeah, light pollution sucks.

Dozens of photographers located in the states of Victoria and Tasmania, –both south of my state of New South Wales–photographed the Aurora Australis on this night. Did I capture some of this light show myself, showing as the pink colour just over the headland left of centre? I’ll wait for some of my more experienced online friends to burst that bubble before I get too confident.

To create this image, I shot ten overlapping frames, with each one taken in “landscape” format. After downloading the shots and doing some editing in Adobe Lightroom, I stitched the ten into the final vertical panoramic format using the now-defunct application Autopano Pro. Each of the ten single images was shot using 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.

The 140+ year-old St Matthias Church looking lovely in the moonlight while the Milky Way is keeling over towards the west. With the 20 second exposures I used to capture the Milky Way’s detail, the camera caught light from the rising crescent moon and so the church and the grass around it look well lit up here. The moonlight was also bright enough to cast a selfie-shadow of me and my camera at the lower right of the shot.

There’s a yellow-white glow coming from behind the church from the lights of Canberra, Australia’s capital city, about 50km (30mi) away. The large, bright and white orb above the power pole on the right is the planet Jupiter, very close to setting for another night. The sky looks a bit mottled and patchy due to fog that was thickening up and on the left you can see a few clouds that were drifting in and starting to ruin the party for me. After this it was time to drive home–with a safety sleep along the way–where I slumped into bed at 8:00am.

This is a vertical panoramic image, created from 7 individual frames, each captured with Canon EOS 6D, Samyang 14mm @ f/2.8, 20 sec @ ISO 6400.

The Milky Way and its core region as they rose over the Tasman Sea near Kiama, Australia on May 7th of 2018. The distinctive orange-purple colour of the background sky is caused by what is known as atmospheric airglow, which has also provided enough light to show the rocks below the water in the foreground.

The bright white ball in the top left corner is the planet Jupiter, which only looks big in the photo because moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere had diffused its light. The bright orange “star” that can be seen hovering over the horizon at the bottom is the planet Mars, and you can see its reflection in the ocean pool below it. Another planet, Saturn, is about a quarter of the way between Mars and Jupiter, but harder to make out in the photo. Saturn’s reflection is easier to see than the planet itself, poking above the rock down at the bottom of the image. The tide rose substantially between arriving at this location and finishing shooting my photos, so I made the 110km drive home with one wet shoe and some partly-wet jeans after scrambling back to the main beach.

The single photo that you see was created from seven overlapping shots, each of which was taken with a Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Rokinon 24mm wide-angle lens set to an aperture of f/2.4, exposed for 15 seconds @ ISO 6400. The camera was mounted on a Nodal Ninja 3 panoramic head atop a Manfrotto tripod.

I can almost hear once again the sound of the quiet that I enjoyed while I shot this scene at the beginning of June on the Tuross River, on Australia's southeast coast. The lack of breeze on the river rendered the water's surface a natural mirror to reflect the light from the sky and the foreground to where I had positioned my camera. As well as numerous stars, you can see the Large Magellanic Cloud–which is a galaxy and not a cloud at all–shining off the top of the water.

At this point, the river forks off to the right into Bumbo Creek, which is broached by the wooden bridge that leads to lush and prized dairy paddocks. Beyond that bridge, you can see the fine layer of fog that hovered over the fields in the post-midnight hour.

Ruling over it all, of course, is the central band and concentrated core of our home in the heavens, the Milky Way galaxy. My attraction to viewing and photographing this section of the sky isn't only the billions of stars concentrated there. The dark filament-like structures known as "dust lanes" that only make themselves visible by the millions of stars they obscure, also captivate me.

I created this image by shooting nine overlapping images, with my camera mounted on a panoramic head that sets a fixed angle between each photo. After capturing the individual pictures and downloading them to my computer, I used some panorama-stitching software to blend the nine images into one. To shoot each of those nine photos I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 20 seconds @ ISO 6400.

Not quite halfway, but it was only a week after the midpoint of 2018 when I was out in the cold of an Aussie winter night, capturing the photos that I used to create this vertical panoramic image. Located near the rural city of Lismore in New South Wales, Australia, this old and former church building is blessed with dark skies on a moonless night. The lack of light pollution, as well as the dry and clear air on that evening, provided excellent conditions for revealing the wispy dust lanes and dark nebulae that characterise the core region of our Milky Way galaxy.

As with so many of my photos from that year, Mars is a dominant player in the scene, looking big, bright and orange over at the top-left of the frame. The Large Magellanic Cloud is peeking out from the bottom edge of the church’s roof on the left, with its sibling the Small Magellanic Cloud making a more conspicuous appearance over the tree near the lower corner of the frame. The short tail of a meteor forms a triangle with Mars and the Small Cloud. For all of the interest that these celestial objects give to the scene, it’s our majestic, magic and magnificent Milky Way that my eyes go straight to, every time I look at this photo.

As I mentioned above, this is a vertical panorama which I composited from ten single, overlapping images. For each of those individual frames I used a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, and a 15-second exposure @ ISO 6400. I had the camera mounted on a Nodal Ninja III panoramic head, tipped at 90 degrees to allow for the vertical orientation.

This image is a stitched vertical panorama created from five overlapping photos. The Milky Way was doing its thing for another night, while local fishermen did their thing on the rock shelf below. The white glow down there on the right is from the headlamps worn by the fishos, while the red arc is from where one of them cast his line into the water, its attached glowing float on heading for another session of bobbing on the waves.

The big section of rock shelf closer to the camera was pock-marked with small pools of seawater, and some of them reflected starlight back towards me, only barely showing up in the photo.

Each of the five images used to create the panorama was captured with a Canon EOS 6D MkII camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.

I love how the yellowed hue of the LED bank that I used to light this shot has highlighted the colours of the stones in the church’s walls. The building is 160 years old and seems to be in excellent condition considering the extremes of temperature and persistent winds that it’s endured in that time. The building is located west of the Australian rural city of Goulburn, and the nation’s capital city of Canberra is the source of the glow on the horizon behind the church.

The drought that’s affecting this area–and a large portion of our country–isn’t something about which the locals happy. For me, though, the dry air provided exceptional viewing of the Milky Way when I visited on this night in August of 2019. The green-blue airglow colour helps to make the stars stand out and is a nice contrast to the colours in the Milky Way’s dust lanes and gas clouds. I can make out the Dark Horse Nebula about one third down from the top, on the right-hand side of the image.

This photo is another example of one of my favourite forms, the “vertical panorama”. I shot seven overlapping images that I stitched into one, using the now-defunct application Autopano Pro. For each of those individual photos, I used my Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4. I exposed each shot for 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.

The Milky Way’s core region was just breaking the horizon in the gap at the entrance to the inlet at Bombo Quarry, Australia, when this image was captured in February of 2017.

The moon was due to rise shortly after this and that explains the slightly orange tint starting to creep into the sky at the horizon.

This photo is a stitched image created from nine single frames, each shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.8, 13 sec @ ISO 6400.

My sister-in-law and her husband live near Lismore, a major rural town in an area that has plenty of flatlands, lots of grassy hills, and everything in between. The other thing the locality has, looking in most directions, is dark skies.

The clarity and darkness of the night sky made it easy to photograph the Milky Way’s band of stars, dust and gas almost hugging the enormous leopard tree in the garden before stretching up to the northeast. Look to the top of the frame, and you'll see the familiar orange glow of the planet Mars. I repositioned my camera several times to capture Jupiter’s blue-white orb before it slipped behind the right-hand side of the tree. I mentioned that the skies are dark in most directions. The pink-white glow from the lights of Lismore, at lower right, is the reason for the “almost”.

To create this photo I shot eight single overlapping frames and then stitched those together using software called Autopano Pro. For each photo that I shot I used the following settings: Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/2.8, with a 25-second exposure @ ISO 6400.

If you’ve read even a few of the blurbs that go with my photos you’ve probably seen me mention Tuross Head. Over forty years ago my family inherited a small holiday shack at this coastal township. My siblings, and our own families, still visit as often as we can.

When I was learning about astronomy in my teen years I’d often spend hours outside staring up at the lovely dark skies while visiting Tuross. Although the area is a little more populated now than in the 70s the skies are still much darker than back in the city.

The disused, heritage-protected church on this land near the town has featured in many of my nightscape photos. This vertical panoramic shot shows the Milky Way and its dust and gas “lanes” ruling this part of the sky. Not too far above the church you can see the Coalsack Dark Nebula, with the Southern Cross immediately to its lower right. Between the Coalsack and the church is a pinkish patch that includes the Eta Carinae nebula.

I created this image from fourteen single images that were shot to overlap and form a vertical panorama. The shots were stitched together using Autopano Pro software. The final image was too big to fit on Instagram so I’ve had to crop some of the Milky Way from the top. Each frame was shot with Canon EOS 6D, Samyang 14mm @ f/4.0, 20 sec @ ISO 6400.

When I took the shots that make up this vertical panorama the moon–at only 12% illumination and three days from New Moon–had been in the eastern sky for a little over an hour. That was just the right brightness to light up the foreground in this scene. The moonlight felt right, you might say.

There is so much detail of the Milky Way’s dust lanes and dark nebulae visible in this image. They look like oil stains on the sky as they block out the light of the billions of stars behind them. The yellow glow at the bottom of the scene is from the lights of Australia’s capital city, Canberra, about 50km (30mi) away.

At bottom left is the St Matthias Church, an Anglican place of worship built in 1875. It was around 3:30 am when I shot this, a time of day that so often brings with it the peace and quiet that regenerates my soul.

The original vertical panorama was created from nine single shots, each captured with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 15 sec @ ISO 6400.

This is a vertical panorama created from nine separate images and shows the Milky Way rising from the north-north-east up towards the zenith (the point on the sky that’s directly overhead). The bright white band of light on the horizon at left is from the town of Berry, a little under 4 km (3 mi) away. A quick flash of my LED lamp–with its “warm” filter fitted–lit up the crossing gate and lights just enough to show their detail here.

Created from nine separate images, each shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.8, 13 sec @ ISO 6400.

I’m a sucker for photographing the poplar trees that line Australia’s country roads, lanes, rivers and creeks. If I can include the Milky Way in a scene, then my day has been well-and-truly made. This copse of poplars, bereft of leaves at the start of winter, stands either side of the parched creek that meanders through the farmland at Big Hill, New South Wales, Australia. Poplars aren’t native to Australia, and in some of our states, have been deemed an “invasive species”. Still, they are quite photogenic, and I made the most of their spindly forms in this image. The bottle-green hues in the sky–caused by atmospheric airglow–offered a colourful backdrop for my photo.

I created this image by shooting nine overlapping frames, moving the camera through an arc that started with it pointing south at the little bridge and down at a slight angle. The last photo was captured with the camera pointing over my head and towards the north, taking in the trees behind me. Each image was photographed through a 14 mm wide-angle lens, making the trees seem to be bending in towards the centre of the Milky Way. My thought was that the gravitational attraction of the hundreds of billions of stars amassed near our home galaxy’s core would be warping the trees in its direction.

As well as the 14 mm wide-angle lens (a Samyang 14 mm XP set to f/3.2), I used my Canon EOS 6D camera mounted on a Nodal Ninja 3 panoramic head. Each image was exposed for 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.

Bamarang Dam is a secondary water reservoir, located about 10km southwest of the coastal-plain town of Nowra, on Australia’s southeast coast. The dam’s intake structure can be seen at the bottom-left, silhouetted by light spilling from the nearby HMAS Albatross naval aviation base and some coastal towns further off.

In the sky above the inlet are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, companion dwarf galaxies that are travelling through space with our home galaxy, the Milky Way. You can see the Milky Way itself rising almost vertically from over the dam wall and up to the top of my image. The planet Mars is dominating the top left-hand corner of the scene, and Jupiter is slipping behind the trees on the right, still over three hours from setting for the night. The background sky colour is showing the green hue of atmospheric airglow.

Each of the seven photos used to create this vertical panorama was taken using a Canon EOS 6D camera, with a Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/3.2, for a 30-second exposure @ ISO 6400. The camera was mounted on a Nodal Ninja 3 panoramic head atop a Manfrotto tripod.

This is what the summer sky looked like back January of 2017 at about 10:50pm, from a spot on the southeast coast of Australia, the Tilba Cemetery.

The dense band of the Milky Way runs diagonally across the shot, from mid-left to lower-right, where it blends into the haze of the horizon. Dark nebulae and dust clouds in space block the light of the stars behind them.

Canopus, the second-brightest star in the Earth’s skies, shines blue-white at the very top of the shot, with the Large Magellanic Cloud below it to the right, looking for all the world like a puff of cotton-wool floating on the breeze. Mid-way down the image and about one third in from the left is the crimson glow the of Eta Carinae nebula. The right-hand edge of this photo is almost on the line of due south.

Created from two single frames, each shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.8, 15 sec @ ISO 6400.

In June, a friend of mine, a professional truck driver, said that he’d noticed this barn a few times on his trips down south. “You should use it in one of your night shots”, he suggested.

Once he said it, the idea seemed too obvious to have missed thinking of myself. After all, I’ve driven past it probably hundreds of times in the 40+ years that I’ve holidayed in the area. Perhaps familiarity does breed contempt, as the saying goes.

Thanks to my friend Kevin I took the 15-minute drive from my holiday shack to photograph this ageing construction at around midnight a few days later. The location–Bodalla–has exceptionally light-pollution-free skies, and I could make out most of the dark features in the Milky Way, even with my ageing eyes.

This image is a single-frame photograph that I shot with my Canon EOS 6D camera, through a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 20 seconds @ ISO 6400.

After several attempts at getting my composition right to include the cattle ramp in this paddock near Nowra, Australia, I shot off the images that comprise this six-image vertical panorama. The planet Jupiter–“the bringer of jollity”, as proclaimed by Gustav Holst–is the brightest object in the photo, in the top left-hand area of the image. Saturn’s yellowish dot is smack in the centre of the image, providing a second planet to include in the scene. The dense, intense and immense central band and galactic core of our Milky Way galaxy is by far the dominant feature of my photograph.

To create this vertical panorama, I shot six photos, overlapping each frame with its predecessor. Shooting like this, then merging the photos using “stitching” software, means I can show a large stretch of the sky in one image. I shot each of those six photos 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.

Wind farms fascinate me, and since the Milky Way’s core was in the right place to include it in a vertical panorama over a wind turbine on this night, I couldn’t pass up the chance to shoot away. The bright glow on the horizon, to the left of the closest tower, is light pollution from the city of Sydney, approximately 160 km (100 mi) distant.

As I mentioned already, this image is a vertical panorama, created from eight overlapping single-images. For those eight images, I used a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.

Early in August of this year 2019, I made one of my crazy 500 km round-trip treks to the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, my home state in Australia. The Taralga Wind Farm was the last location I visited for photos that night, arriving at about 1:00 am and then spending about an hour, shooting pictures. The whole night was cloud-free, but as the night ran into the early morning, the amount of moisture in the air increased. I could see from my photos that the deep green colour of the atmospheric airglow had morphed into the rusty colour in the sky that my photo has captured.

The core region of the Milky Way, with its wisps of dust and interstellar gas, is looking glorious here. The planet Jupiter’s bright, white orb is hanging in the sky below. Saturn was also shining on this night, showing as an orange dot at the top right-hand corner of the scene.

I shot seven landscape-format images to create the final single-image photo, using a panoramic head on my camera to ensure proper overlap between each frame. For each of those seven photos, I used a Canon EOS 6D camera and a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.6, exposing each frame for 6.0 seconds @ ISO 12800.

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This rickety bridge over the Bumbo Creek at Bodalla, Australia, has loads of character and even more gaps between its planks. Walking across it in the dark is not for the faint-hearted! When I visited the location in January of 2019 the Magellanic Clouds–satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way–happened to line up right over the bridge. The stillness of the water in the 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. 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.

Named for the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the two glowing clouds seemingly suspended in the sky over this field north of Goulburn, Australia, are known as the “Magellanic Clouds”.

For this image, I shot seven single-frame photos in quick succession, then used the software “Starry Landscape Stacker” to composite them into a final picture that had less digital noise and better definition than any of the contributing images. The equipment and settings that I used for each photo were a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.8, using an exposure time of 6.0 seconds @ ISO 6400. I set the camera on a fixed tripod, i.e. I didn’t use a star-tracker.

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 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.

A fine and almost invisible layer of mist was hugging the surface of Tuross Lake when I sat on the small beach at Sandy Point at around 4:00 am on a Sunday, morning in July of 2019. As thin as that mist layer was, the air contained enough moisture to give a milky look to the water around the red and orange navigation markers whose light demands your attention when you first view this photo.

I shot five overlapping photos to create the final vertical panoramic image that you see here. That composite image measured roughly 5800 x 12200 pixels and consumed almost half a gigabyte of disk space! Each of those five single photos was shot with my Canon EOS6D camera, a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.4, using an exposure time of 8.0 seconds @ ISO 6400.

This has to be one of the worst-placed signs I’ve ever seen. If you’re going to get out and camp under the stars, wouldn’t you want to do it somewhere like this, at the Yalwal Dam, Australia? Sometimes life isn’t fair!

This vertical panorama has quite a few of my favourite astronomical features in it. At the lower left, only just over the tree line, there’s a crimson area of stars that is the Eta Carinae nebula. Up to the right of that is the Coal Sack nebula, showing as a small dark mark on the bright starry background. The Southern Cross is immediately under the lower-right corner of the Coal Sack, with Alpha & Beta Centauri, aka “The Pointers”, up to the right.

Our solar system’s most massive planet, Jupiter, is almost out of frame on the right, being kept company by the bright star Zubenelgenubi, in the constellation of Libra. Shining in its beautiful orange glory at the top and centre of my photo is Mars, which had passed its closest point to earth a couple of weeks before I captured it in this scene.

Of course, the edge-on view that we have of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, totally dominates the photo, looking like a vast diagonal streak of light and dark stains against the starry sky.

I shot nine overlapping frames to create this vertical panorama but only ended up needing seven of those to capture all of the features that I wanted to include. For each of those seven photos, I used the following settings: a Canon EOS 6D digital SLR camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens set @ f/2.4, a 15-second exposure @ ISO 6400.

The colours of the Milky Way, Jupiter and Saturn in the night sky are a beautiful contrast to the less-than-appealing green ooze lurking in the artificial pond at the bottom of my photo. Ugly or not, the mix of stormwater, silt and other unwholesome ingredients at least provided enough of a still surface to reflect some of the heavenly lights towards my camera. You can see Jupiter and Saturn at the bottom of the shot, atop the surface of the ooze.

My visit to this fenced-off compound in the Seven Mile Beach National Park took place in June of this year, on one of the first nights that people in our state able to travel again following the lifting of some COVID-19 restrictions. I’m grateful that I was able to be out and about, especially as our neighbouring state of Victoria has seen a resurgence in coronavirus cases and is now under a very tight Level-4 lockdown.

The image you’re looking at was created by shooting ten overlapping frames and stitching them in software to create a vertical panorama. For each one of those ten shots, I used a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.

There are several things going on in this image, with the central band and core region of the Milky Way standing out–and standing up–down the centre of the photo. You can see the light from the hundreds of billions of stars that make up our galaxy, some of which are masked by the enormous dust lanes that stretch through the spiral arms of our “island universe”, as galaxies used to be called.

Down at the left and not too far above the trees are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. These are dwarf galaxies that are travelling through space with the Milky Way, kind of like those folk who hover around politicians when there’s a photo opportunity. Higher up but still on the left-hand side of the frame is the planet Mars. Almost as bright as Mars, but definitely not the same orange-red colour, you can see our solar system’s most massive planet, Jupiter on the right. As well as being the biggest planet in our system Jupiter also holds the record for the number of moons that orbit it. The count is currently 79!

I created this final image from eight overlapping single frames, each captured with the following equipment and settings: Canon EOS 6D camera, Samyang 14mm XP lens (manual focus) @ f/2.4, 25-second exposure @ ISO 6400.

Picnics aren't usually fun if you're on your own, I'm told. Being alone in the picnic area at Seven Mile Beach, Gerroa, Australia, under this incredibly beautiful and awe-inspiring sky on a winter's night in June of this year, was a time I'd be happy to experience again. The Milky Way's core was almost straight overhead at this time of the night, although it doesn't look that way here due to the warping that a vertical panoramic photo brings with it. A little below midway down my image, you can see the Solar System's two most massive planets, Jupiter and Saturn, making their way up the eastern sky.

The picnic grounds here are another location on my ever-growing list of places that I've only ever visited after dark. There was a slight wind breathing through the area on the night, keeping the air free of dust, helping me to make the most of the very dark skies that the region offers. The only disappointment attached to this nightscape photography trek was that I had to work the next day, limiting the time that I could stay before making the 110 km (68 mi) drive back to my home in Sydney.

As I mentioned above, this photo is a vertical panorama, created by shooting ten overlapping frames that were then stitched into the final image using the application Autopano Pro. I shot each of the individual frames with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.4, using an exposure time of 10 seconds @ ISO 3200.

Fellow photographer & good friend Ian Williams http://bit.ly/imagesbyimw recently commented that I was well overdue for posting one of my favourite types of nightscape photos, a vertical panorama of the Milky Way rising. With movements currently restricted to essential travel only, that was a tall order. I was up to the task though and found some images that I hadn’t yet edited or posted. Ian, here is my answer to your challenge, a nine-shot vertical panorama showing the Milky Way stretching up and out of the southeast over the Tasman Sea, captured at Seven Mile Beach near Gerroa, Australia.

The crescent moon was peeking over the horizon as I took the overlapping frames that make up the pano. As well as the yellowed Moon I caught the mighty Jupiter, our solar system’s most massive planet, in the scene, positioned in the middle of the photo at about 1/3 up from the bottom edge. If you draw an imaginary line between Jupiter and the Moon you can see two other planets that I’m happy to include here, being Saturn and Mars, respectively.

The background sky has a green hue in my photo, caused by what is known as atmospheric airglow. Another astronomical wonder I captured here, but which is hard to make out if you’re looking at the photo on your phone, is the globular star cluster Omega Centauri, up in the top right-hand corner of the frame.

Regular readers won’t be surprised to see that for each of the nine images making up this panorama I used my workhorse Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, fitted with a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.8, with an exposure time of 10 seconds @ ISO 6400.

There goes another month in which I'd set out to post a photo every day, but in which, until today, I'd only managed to get eight images online. It seems to be the year for things going awry, so I guess I'll chalk up another missed goal for 2020! Last Friday night (24th July) I put in a 227 km (141 mi) round-trip to the rock platform at Black Head Point, Gerroa, on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia.

I shot some vertical panoramas that I will post in due course, but today's post is this more straightforward image that features the crumbling face of Black Head itself, watched over by the Milky Way. Up on top of the headland, but out of the shot, local photographer & fellow night-nerd Jason De Freitas had staked out a position, capturing the Rho Ophiuchi region of the sky. I saw Jason's gear in place when I arrived, so after getting back to my car when I finished shooting, I tapped on his car window and said hi. I love that once I said I'd driven down from Sydney, and even without him being able to see my face, Jason asked, "Hey, are you Doug?" Have a look at Jason's photography on Instagram instagram.com/jase.film or the web at www.jasondefreitas.com.

I created this shot by overlaying or ("stitching", as it's known), three photos. None of the three took in the whole scene that I wanted to capture, so I had to shoot each one and then let my software do the job of putting it all together. I captured each of those three individual frames using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/4.0, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.