Western Australian Wheatbelt starry night sky through the leaves of a Eucalyptus tree
A nice dark night at my rural property where the Milky Way shines brightly and stars glisten. Shown here the Milky Way, portion showing the Pointers of the Southern sky, behind the leaves and branches of a Eucalyptus tree. I run workshops teaching astrophotography at locations including this family property of ours.
2017 Geminid Meteor from the WA Wheatbelt on the 14th December 2017 at 03:03am local time.
I took a drive to the Wheatbelt for some Geminid meteors among other things on the 14th December 2017. I had my usual two cameras with me, the Canon 6D and Fuji X-E2. The 6D was shooting with a Canon full-circular fisheye (8-15mm F/4) and the Fuji with the Samyang 12mm F/2.
I left both cameras going as long as their batteries would last, which ended up being about 2:30am for the Canon and 3:30am for the Fuji. This lucky strike of a bright meteor was captured by the Fuji X-E2 at 3:03am local time. It’s a bright meteor that’s for sure! The green hue is very obvious and would have been fantastic to see in person, but I was asleep at the time!
The Waning [almost] Full Moon. 8 photographs merged in a mosaic, so there are some blending artifacts making this not a 100% accurate “map”. But hey, it looks good.
Blending mosaics of the Moon like this has become incredibly easy in recent years. The old days of 1990’s and early 2000’s photoshopping it would be a very manual affair with masks and adjustments. Now, a simple click will blend images of different brightness in to a seamless image. Photoshop doesn’t show any sympathy for all my painful hours of processing such moon mosaics in years gone by!
Moon, Jupiter and Spica from the 11th April 2017. Four moons of Jupiter are visible in the image also.
Jupiter has been moving through the night sky over the last few months as it becomes more of a evening object. It has been gliding past the bright star Spica and on the night of 11th April formed a nice triangle with the bright (99.7% illuminated) Full Moon. Above is a photograph from the night and below a photograph of the equipment taking some of the images.
Photographing the Moon, Jupiter and Spica on 11th April 2017. Shown is my Canon 6D on Megrez 80 tracked by my Astrotrac mount.
The Moon – 9th November 2016 from Perth Observatory.
Here’s a nice little shot of the Moon for your midweek enjoyment. A simple snap through a refractor at the Perth Observatory using my Fuji X-E2. Click to view a larger size image for a 1.22mb JPG you can “walk” around 🙂