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Archive for the ‘Victoria’ Category
Loch Ard Gorge Panorama
Monday, January 28th, 2013During a quick trip to one of my favourite places in Victoria – Loch Ard Gorge on the Great Ocean Road I manage to make a full panorama of the Gorge with a small Aurora and a lot of airglow in the sky
The image covers 360 degrees horizontally and features the Milky Way, Jupiter, Orion, Magellanic Clouds and Southern Cross. Below is the virtual reality tour which should get you close to “being there”.
Loch Ard Gorge Panorama
If you click on the Virtual Tour thumbnail on the left you should be able to pan and zoom using the buttons at the bottom of the image or just click and drag it with the mouse to pan and use Shift/Ctrl keys to zoom in and out. Adobe Flash player is required.
Liquid Light Show (Bioluminescence and Aurora)
Friday, January 18th, 2013During our camping holiday at Wilsons Promontory National Park (Victoria, Australia) in December I noticed a glimpse of bioluminescence in the surf. However, the weather was not favourable for night sky photography and I knew I had to return at the earliest opportunity and photograph this phenomenon under the stars.
I waited for the next New Moon in January 2013 and ventured out to Squeaky Beach at night. Electric blue surf started to appear when it became dark and it was amazing to see the blue sparkle as I walked in the water.
The ghostly blue light is is produced by small single-celled marine micro-organisms called Noctiluca scintillans (commonly known as the Sea Sparkle) through a chemical reaction. It can be found all over the globe and particularly in areas of nutrient-rich waters. I could not resist adding Aurora Australis footage I took at Mornington Peninsula in October 2012 to create the natural “Liquid Light Show”.
The “Memories of the Moon” track by zero-project was a perfect fit for this time-lapse.
Images and Virtual Reality Tour
Squeaky Beach Panorama
If you click on the Virtual Tour thumbnail on the left you should be able to pan and zoom using the buttons at the bottom of the image or just click and drag it with the mouse to pan and use Shift/Ctrl keys to zoom in and out. Adobe Flash player is required.
Virtual Tours at Cape Schanck
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
Three Galaxies and Meteor Shower
Thursday, 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).
Panning time-lapse experiment
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011At the beginning of January we went for a short weekend break to a place near lake Eildon in Victoria and the sky cleared one night for a change.
I wanted to test my new Orion Teletrack motorised tripod head for panning horizontally with the speed of Earth rotation. I had a few technical glitches and the result is not quite what I had in mind but is nice nonetheless. The first part of the time lapse is illuminated by the gas torches around the farm house.
Lake Tyrrel Star Party
Friday, October 8th, 2010Recently I read about a new star party in the North West Victoria – the “Lake Tyrrel Star Party”. At the star party on Saturday there were great lectures about Mars by Dr Victor Gostin, “Aboriginal Skies” by Paul Curnow and the “Night Sky of the Boorong” by John Morieson.
Lake Tyrrel is a special place – the area was once home to Boorong people and the name “Tyrrel” is the Boorong word for sky and space. When there is water in the lake and the night is cloudless and still, the whole night sky can be seen reflected in the water.
The Boorong identified a significant number of stars and constellations. The constellations are based on both stars and dark patches in the sky, like “Bunya” the possum that sits on top of the tree (Southern Cross) or “Tchingal” – the giant emu that eats people (the bright band of central Milky Way represents the Emu’s body, and the Coal Sack dark nebula is the head with the beak).
The Boorong clan no longer exists as a separate entity, but their descendants live in north-west Victoria and throughout Victoria.
I found the good spot on the Eastern side of the lake where the water was shallow and recessed producing mirror-like surface. So I set up the camera on the tripod and went back to the star party at the lake viewing platform to share the views of the excellent dark sky through my telescope.
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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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