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Archive for August, 2010
Milky Way Shadow Reflection and Belt of Venus
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010In Port Campbell National Park there are some gorgeous places I can’t wait to photograph under the night skies. There is one small problem, however… The Weather. This part of the coast appears to be one of the most wet cloudy and unpredictable places in Victoria.
We travelled with the family along the Great Ocean Road in April 2010 and the day after we came back I set up the weather page for a small town of Port Campbell as a home page in my web browser. The wait for a clear night around New Moon began…
Only in July 2010 the weather forecast looked half-decent so I hopped in the car and drove some 300kms only to find thick cloud all over the sky in the evening. But around 1am the clouds miraculously disappeared and I was rewarded with brilliant views of the Milky Way from Loch Ard Gorge lookout.
Milky Way Shadow Reflection
Being far away from man-made lights the place was very dark on a moonless night. The centre our Milky Way Galaxy is the most significant source of light which helped to created peculiar dark reflections on the water in the middle of the frame.
Chasing Aurora Australis
Sunday, August 8th, 2010Our Sun begins to leave its solar minimum stage in its eleventh year of sun spot activity and is becoming more active. A reasonably strong coronal mass ejection was detected on August 1st, 2010 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
The size of the event had been grossly exaggerated by the media but I still hoped to image some weak Southern Lights and headed down to Cape Schanck as soon as heavy clouds went away. The slight pink glow visible in the image could just be a very weak Aurora.
Bright Venus produced a nice path of light on the water with Mars and Saturn nearby. The night was cold and humid but the camera kept clicking…
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