I captured today’s photo on the same night as one I posted a few days back. I noted in that shot’s caption that I tried in vain to find a cloudless sky on that night (December 30, 2018), and here’s further proof. The constellations of Orion and Taurus–which includes the star cluster we call the Pleiades–seem to have some bright, colourful and obese members in my photo, courtesy of the thin cloud layer that dogged my quest for clarity.

The yellowed light reflecting from the not-so-thin cloud cover that’s hugging the horizon was spilling up to the sky from the town of Cooma, located a straight-line distance of 90 km (56 mi) from where I stood to get this photo, near Tuross Head, Australia.

I captured this single-frame image with a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, fitted with a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4 using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.

My photo today is another from my vault of "I'll get to them someday" shots, captured in December of 2018 near Bodalla, Australia. I remember this being a night when I burned up more time trying to outrun clouds than shooting images of the sky. My efforts weren't all in vain, though. The thin layer of airborne moisture that wafted into the area on my arrival served to enhance the colours of the stars.

To the left of the largest tree, I caught the familiar shape of the Southern Cross. Below and a little to the right, the two "pointers", Alpha and Beta Centauri, are showing more like glowing blobs than the usual pinpricks of light that stars seem to be when we look at the night sky. The Large Magellanic Cloud–the only cloud that I had hoped to see through my viewfinder–is conspicuous in the top right-hand corner of my shot.

The photo is a single-frame image that I took with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4 using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.

According to the scant information I turned up searching online, the expression to be “as contented as a cow” came from an early-1900s advertising slogan that was used by a dairy company to promote their milk. Wherever the saying came from, I thought these cows and bulls looked contented last night (Friday 11th September) when I photographed them under the clear and calm skies near Nerriga, Australia. The bottle-green hue of the background sky in my image comes from a phenomenon called “atmospheric airglow”. This natural colouring of the night occurs in several shades, but this green is my favourite.

The dark blotches and streaks on the sky aren’t smudges on my camera’s lens, but show the presence of dark gas clouds–nebulae–that are light-years away in space. These structures block the light from the millions of stars behind them and have been used by Australia’s indigenous people for navigation, seasonal indicators and cultural markers for many millennia.

Around one-third of the way up from the bottom of the shot, and about one third in from the left, you can see a crimson-coloured blotch of light, shining from the Eta Carinae nebula.

My photo is a single-frame image, captured with a Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.

After all that social distancing, busy weekdays & weekends at work, then seemingly endless days of clouds and rain, last Saturday night offered a chance to get out for some nightscape photos. The Moon was due to set just after midnight, but I left home at around 7:00 pm to give myself time to enjoy a long drive and scout some new locations for future shoots.

The sky was cloudless for the first half of my 290 km (180 mi) round-trip expedition, allowing me to get a dozen or so photos of the Moonlit countryside around Berry, New South Wales, Australia. I then drove to the spot I had in mind for my post-Moonset Milky Way photos, parked my car and slept for about an hour. Waking a couple of minutes before midnight, I was unimpressed to see that a canopy of high, thin clouds had moved in from the west.

Sticking to my photographic philosophy that "every shot is practice for the next one", I decided to snap away anyhow. Fog and thin clouds do wonders for enhancing the colours and brightness of the stars in photos, and today's post is an example of just how much difference that airborne moisture makes. Featured in the image are the stars Alpha and Beta Centauri, aka "The Pointers", plus Crux, the "Southern Cross". The clouds are evident in the top half of the shot, but I don't think they ruined my night.

This single-frame photo was captured using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera fitted with a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 6.0 seconds @ ISO 6400.

I remember the night that I shot this photo of Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades star cluster in the west near Tilba, Australia. It was, in fact, the evening of the first day of 2019. Despite being in the middle of our southern summer, it’s not unusual to have weeks on end of cloudy nights in January there on the coast. On this New Year’s night, I had driven for nearly two hours to find a location with a clear view of the stars, eventually stopping on this hill overlooking the eponymous Tilba Lake. The clouds managed to stay away only long enough for me to shoot nine photos, a far cry from the hundreds that I’d typically click off in a session.

The unmissable orange glow at the bottom right-hand corner of the photo is from sodium-vapour safety lights on the nearby Princes Highway. Even at a place like this, hundreds of kilometres from any major city, there’s still some artificial lighting intent on upsetting the night photographer’s plans for dwelling in total darkness.

Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.4 using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.

Despite having an early start for work the next morning, on Thursday night (27th Feb) I drove 110 km/68 mi to the ocean rock platform at Gerroa, on the southeast coast of New South Wales, Australia. The weather forecast was for clear skies until a little after 1:00 am, but I got lucky & even when I left for home at 2:30 there was no hint that the forecast would turn out to be accurate.

When I arrived I still had a couple of hours before the Milky Way’s core rose in the southeast, so I put in some time getting shots of other features of the nocturnal skies that grabbed my eye. This shot took a lot of effort–read moaning and groaning as my knees resisted my call to squat down–so I am pleased with how well it came off. My photo shows the constellation Orion at the top-centre of the scene, with its familiar shape reflected in the small rock pool right at the bottom of the frame. The red star Aldebaran was close to the western horizon after having made another crossing of the sky during the previous twelve hours.

The photo is a single-frame image, captured with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/2.0 using an exposure time of 13.0 seconds @ ISO 6400.

“What’s a dunny?” I hear you ask. Every country and culture has them, in one form or another. Pretty much any Aussie can tell you that a “dunny” is a toilet. Yes, I admit it’s a strange name, but since when was local slang not weird at some time? Whatever you call it in your culture, a toilet isn’t often something that’s regarded for its looks. Under a starry sky, though, I reckon that even a dunny looks good. This little outdoor dunny sits in a picnic area in the Seven Mile Beach National Park, Australia. I can’t speak for its cleanliness, smell or the comfort of its seats, but I’m sure this dunny is appreciated by those in need of its facility.

The dark nebulae and gas clouds of the Milky Way are prominent in my photo. The smaller one near the middle of the shot is known as the “Coal Sack Nebula”. The Southern Cross is just below the Coal Sack, and below that familiar asterism is the dense region of the Eta Carinae Nebula.

Those of you interested in taking photos of the night sky might appreciate the shooting data that I provide with each of my photos. I captured the shot using 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.