Terrastro
Red Aurora above the Southern Ocean
February 1st, 2012After chasing it for more than two years I was finally rewarded with two displays of Auroa Australis (Southern lights) within a week visible from Mornington Peninsula, not far from Melbourne. The nights were warm an clear and the Moon was not in the sky either – I could not have asked for better conditions.
The red color of this aurora is caused by the charged particles from the Sun exciting oxygen atoms high in the Earth’s atmosphere. Hopefully there will be more to come as Sun’s activity increases in 2012-13.
Great Christmas Comet Lovejoy
December 26th, 2011At the conclusion of 2011 stargazers in the Southern Hemisphere were given a magnificent Christmas gift – the Great Comet Lovejoy, discovered by Australian amateur astronomer from Brisbane Terry Lovejoy.
On the morning of December 23rd I was at Cape Schanck, Victoria and the comet rising above the Southern Ocean was as magnificent to see as it appears on these photos.
I also managed to photograph the comet when it was much fainter on December 30th, from Great Ocean Road as seen in this “Little Planet” image stitched from 12 fish-eye photos.
Tekapo Starlight
December 6th, 2011Epic Stargaze
September 5th, 2011For the fifth year Astronomical Society of Albury Woodonga organised a spectacular star party – Border Stargaze. This year’s stargaze was exceptional in many ways. The weather was kind and we had an epic run of five clear nights in a row.
Everyone was busy observing the sky with telescopes small and large at night and I had two cameras clicking away. The result is this three minute (my longest yet!) time lapse animation. There are four galaxies – The Milky Way, Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, Andromeda Galaxy and many many stars. The changing sky colour from natural Oxygen glow in the upper atmosphere is quite startling.
Amazing STARMUS Experience
July 26th, 2011It was very hard to believe but I won a trip to the STARMUS festival and spent an incredible week on Canary Islands in June 2011.
In May a panel of judges chose my ‘Ocean Sky’ time-lapse video as the overall winner of STARMUS astro-photography contest. On top of that I was awarded one hour of observations with Gran Telescopio Canarias (GranTeCan), the largest optical telescope in the world at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the Island of La Palma.
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Automatic timer for Sony NEX-5
July 23rd, 2011I quite like my little Sony NEX-5.
It has a great imaging sensor in a very compact body. Because it is so light I used it with my telescope for astro-photography and was getting good results.
However, the frustrating thing about Sony NEX series is that it does not have a built in automatic timer (intervalometer) and it was not much fun pressing the button on the infra-red remote every 15 seconds.
So I got an inexpensive remote shutter release with timer on ebay. I chose the one for Canon/Pentax because it has 2.5mm jack and I could easily fit a socket onto my IR remote control without damaging it.
Here is a brief tutorial with pictures just in case you have Sony NEX-5 camera and would like to use for time-lapse movies or astro-photography.
Checking in from STARMUS
June 23rd, 2011I am having great time at STARMUS festival where I was invited as a winner of the astro-photography competition. The list of guests is nothing short of amazing, including Alexei Leonov, Neil Armstron, Buzz Aldrin and many other prominent scientists, Astronauts and Cosmonauts.
Ocean Sky
STARMUS Astro-photography Competition
Overall Winner
I’ll write a much more detailed post later when I get back home from the Canary Islands.
Virtual Tours at Cape Schanck
May 3rd, 2011
Imaging the sky with a telescope
February 14th, 2011The ever-challenging Astronomy hobby has led me to experimenting with taking images through a telescope.
My telescope is a rather large reflector on a 
mount that moves in altitude and azimuth (Dobsonian). These telescopes are not generally suitable for astro-photography because they do not compensate Earth rotation. However having 22″ of aperture allows to image brighter deep-space objects with reasonable results using exposure time under 15 seconds.
Saturday night was half-clear and I put my Sony NEX-5 camera into the telescope and took a few images (it always helps to take a few images and stack them together to minimise noise). It was quite thrilling to take an image of the Orion Nebula and see a lot of colour on the camera screen so I kept going and tried a few more objects. The images below are quite modest in modern astro-photography but I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.
You can view a full size image, a brief description and technical data when you click on a thumbnail below and scroll through the gallery.
Equipment
Three Galaxies and Meteor Shower
February 3rd, 2011The satellite weather image started to look promising around 8pm on the last Monday in January 2011 and I made a snap decision to go my favourite spot in Flinders to do a panning time lapse as well as some observing with my telescope. After 1.5-hour drive, I set up the camera to continuously take an image every 30 seconds and enjoyed a long deep sky observing session. The highlight of the night were spectacular galaxies near Large Magellanic Cloud (in southern constellations Dorado and Volans).
I also noticed quite a few meteors in the southern sky and remembered Alpha Crucids meteor shower was around this time of the year. It is named after the brightest star in Southern Cross constellation (Crux). I looked it up and it is active in the second half of January. Below is one of the brighter meteors I was lucky to capture on camera (in the upper left part of the frame).
Galleries
