#nightscapeoz

#Repost @nightscapades ・・・ 26 Nov 2018. The heavens at halfway 📆 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 this 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. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #canon #darkskyshots #earth_tag #ig_astrophotography #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #space #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams #lismore #church https://www.instagram.com/p/BqynLIEB7gc/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=7sc4wcpcqhen

#Repost @nightscapades ・・・ 25 Sep 2018. Bioluminescence on Mars 😱 This whole scene looks very eerie, to me. The time was around 3:00 am, and Mars was very low in the southwestern sky. Its reflection was so bright! The bioluminescence in the water was also brilliant, and I wanted to line the two up so that the light from Mars would be reflected in one of the small pools of bio on the sandbar. 👏 There have been several photos that I’ve posted where I’ve mentioned my amazement that the light from a celestial object, so far away from us, is still strong enough to penetrate our atmosphere and then be reflected off some wet surface. Being able to pair that amazement with my excitement at photographing bioluminescence for the first time was worth all of the failed shots that it took to get this one. Failing is one of the many great things about digital photography, though. Learning from a failed photo is way cheaper and requires so much less time in the digital realm that it ever did in the film days. 📷 This photograph is a single-frame image that I shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, for a 15-second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #mars #bioluminescence @eurobodalla https://www.instagram.com/p/BoQMmMUB_5c/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1mijohf6oj1ey

#Repost @nightscapades ・・・ 09 Aug 2018. Bend and stretch, reach for the stars 📆 The end of Milky Way season for 2018 is still a few months away for us here in the Southern Hemisphere, but I am starting to fret about how many more chances I’ll get to photograph my favourite part of the night sky. When I shot this scene at 9:30 pm last Saturday night, the Milky Way’s core had passed overhead, and the rich band of stars, dust and gas that gives our home galaxy its name was now into the western half of the sky. In a month’s time, the stars will be in this position at 7:30 pm. With Daylight Saving cutting in during the first weekend of October, the same view will occur at 6:30 pm but the sun won’t have set yet. Time marches on too quickly! 🌲🌌🌲 I’ve made use of poplars to frame the Milky Way in several shots over the past four years, and I continue to find them useful for that. 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. 📷 For each of the five photos in this vertical panorama I used the following: Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/2.8, 25-second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 @photographerfocus #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #Poplars @sout

24 Apr 2018. Aussie aperture 📖 “Aperture: an opening, hole, or gap; a space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light passes through a camera”. For this photo, I chose the "aperture" in the canopy of Australian eucalypt trees to let through the light of the Milky Way, so that the open "aperture" of my camera could record that light for you to see. 🌌 As well as the central band and core region of the Milky Way, this photo captured the light from three planets. Jupiter can be seen peeking out from the leaves at the top-left of the shot. Saturn is on the left side of the “v” shape in the trees at the bottom, and Mars, which is hidden by the trees below that “v”, but which managed to shine its light through the smallest of gaps there. An irony of this shot is that it I took it at a location that’s about a 20-minute drive from my home, towards the very end of a four-hour road trip to find clear and dark skies. 📷 Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at National Falls)

06 Mar, 2018. Framed by foliage 🌲 I composed this photo so that the sinew-like bare branches of the pecan tree seem to be reaching out to the filaments of interstellar dust around the Milky Way’s galactic core region. The leaves of the deciduous trees in the garden frame what to me is one of the night sky’s most beautiful sights (the Milky Way’s core, not the bare tree). 🌌 The location where I took this photo is a place of creative inspiration. It’s in the garden of my brother-in-law, @warwickwrightart, near the city of Lismore, in northern New South Wales, Australia. I encourage you to click through & look at Warwick’s Instagram feed, to see just some of what can be done with colour and light in the hands of a skilled artist. 📷 Taken with a Canon EOS 6D, Samyang XP 14mm @ f/2.4, 25 sec @ ISO 6400. @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Lindendale)

19 Feb, 2018. Good timing! On Sunday morning after I took the Milky Way core images that I posted yesterday, I started the 100km (60mi) drive north to my home in Sydney, Australia. As I set off I remembered that there was a pass of the International Space Station (ISS) due in less than an hour’s time. Checking my GPS and doing some calculations in my head I worked out that I could time things so that I’d be at the communications towers at Maddens Plains, on the Illawarra Escarpment, a couple of minutes before the ISS silently flew over at its orbital speed of about 27,600 kilometres per hour (17,150 mph). I made the 60km (37mi) drive and the 600-odd metre walk from the carpark with little time to spare. The sun’s light was starting to bring colour to the sky and the fine clouds scattered around it. The size of my car’s cabin means that I can’t leave my tripod’s legs extended when travelling, so by the time I lined up the planned ISS track to be between the two towers in the photo AND set up the tripod AND focussed the shot AND checked my exposure settings, I had about ten seconds before I saw the glow of the ISS above the trees on the horizon. Thankfully I got five shots that covered the ISS’s path from the tree line to the top edge of the camera frame. These were opened in Photoshop as one image with five layers that I then combined using the “Lighten” blend mode. Due to small gaps between each image I had to do some cloning of the ISS trail between shots. The images were captured with Canon EOS 6D Mk II, Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/3.2, 30 seconds per shot @ ISO 100. @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #nasa #iss #internationalspacestation #illawarra #telstra #satellite (at Maddens Plains)

08 Feb, 2018. Metropolitan Moon montage 👌🏻👏 After my (almost) fruitless, 685km eclipse-chasing expedition last Wednesday, it was pleasing to get some photos of the Moon rising last night, one week later. Unlike eclipse night, there were no clouds to fuzz up my shots, and all the better was the distance travelled to get these images. The 25-metre walk from my home office to the edge of my balcony made for a very short round-trip time. I don’t do much urban astrophotography due to how much light pollution you get in a city of about 5 million people, but that’s not a problem when it comes to photographing the Moon. 🌓 The trees that masked the Moon’s half-disc are about 500 metres from my home, but even using a lens aperture of f/36, I still couldn’t get the trees and the Moon both in focus. You can see the difference in colour between the Moon when it was higher in the sky (top-left here) than when it first came over the horizon (bottom-right), due to how the atmosphere refracts different colours of light depending on the angle at which you're looking through it. 📷 The montage is comprised of four single images, each shot with Canon EOS 6D Mk II, Sigma 50-500mm lens @ 500mm @ f/36, 1/40 second exposure @ ISO 3200. • • • • • #moon #lunar @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #miranda #urbanastronomy (at Miranda, New South Wales, Australia)