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.

Being able to photograph it all night I came up with a nice video. The brighter Aurora happened on January 22nd and the smaller one, featured in the middle section, was from January 16th followed by a rather bright Moonrise.

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.

The documentary went on air in Japan on national TV (BS Japan) November 27th and here is the announcement with a short preview in Japanese and Google translation

Lake Tekapo on South Island in New Zealand is arguably one of best night sky locations in the Southern Hemisphere. The sky there is seriously dark and the Lake Tekapo village manages to control light pollution nicely (being next to Mt John observatory). The lights in the village can be seen but there is not much scatter above, even in long exposures. The orange glow is only noticeable when reflected by low clouds directly above.

I fell in love with the place and will definitely come back again, hopefully when Aurora Australis is on display.

Virtual Tour

Tekapo Starlight

Night Sky and Light Pollution

The significance of Lake Tekapo pristine night sky without light pollution is recognised world-wide and is being included in the list of UNESCO Starlight Reserves. The World at Night works closely with UNESCO Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative helping increase public awareness of the importance of dark skies.

More images

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.

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.

The winning video (full sceen viewing is reomeended)

STARMUS Festival

After 36-hour flight I landed safely on Tenerife Island and checked in to a very nice hotel right on the beach. The festival was to start next day and I had some time to recover from the flight.

Kathryn Gray, the youngest ever supernova discoverer opened the festival and was followed by Dr. Robert Williams, the president of IAU presenting the “Five Key Astronomical Discoveries of the Past 50 Years”.

Then Buzz Aldrin shared his Apollo 11 experience, Jill Tarter presented “Intelligent Life in the Universe”,  astronaut astronaut and astrophysicist Claude Nicollier described his “Visits to Hubble”, Michel Mayor talked about his excellent research on Extra-Solar planets and Leslie Sage from Nature talked about “How Astronomy Has Changed What it Means to be Human”.

The following four days were as impressive and informative. The speakers included two Nobel laureates -cosmologist George Smoot and biologist Jack Szostak – talking about the ‘Signals from the Beginning of the Universe’ and ‘The Origin of Life on Earth’, black hole guru Kip Thorne and biologist Richard Dawkins. Apollo mission astronauts Neil Armstrong, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, Charlie Duke and Russian cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Yuri Baturin shared their experience in space. Brian May the guitarist of Queen and astrophysicist presented a moving talk about risks of bad human behaviour taken to beyond Earth. All astronauts, cosmonauts and scientists were very open to public at lunch breaks and dinners.

On Wednesday night when I turned 36, invited guests including Neil Armstrong, sang Happy Birthday at the gala dinner – it was a moment to remember.

Australian pioneer astro-photographer David Malin hosted a star party on Mt Teide, 2200 metres above sea level. Although there was some dust from Sahara desert in the atmosphere, the views were great nonetheless.

On Thursday morning we had a tour at Mt. Teide Observatory, which was my first visit to a professional optical observatory and it was excellent. We saw a few professional telescopes including 80cm telescope, 1.52m Telescopio Carlos Sanchez and THEMIS – a very impressive French Solar observatory.

La Palma Observatory and the date with GranTeCan

On Sunday I flew to Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma Island for the observation night at the GranTeCan.

It was most unforgettable experience. Situated on the volcanic peak 2,267 metres and above clouds, the chances of good weather at night were rather good and Weather Gods did not disappoint. I arrived at the telescope in the evening with the astronomer on duty and we started preparing the observation plan. After long consideration back home, I chose Arp84 for the observation mainly because it is a nice pair of interacting galaxies that fits into the field of view of the imaging instrument on GranTeCan and I could not find a detailed colour image of this object. When the twilight ended the telescope was pointed at the pair of galaxies NGC5394 and NGC5395  and we took a first few shots to position the object in the 7.8’ field of view. Then the imaging sequence with green, red, infrared, H-alpha and SIII filters was executed flawlessly (thanks, Riccardo!)

The atmosphere was rather stable and seeing varied in 0.8-1 arc-seconds (which is very good).  The image turned out great and Noel Carboni, whom I met for the first time at STARMUS kindly offered his experience and  helped to produce this colour image from the individual channels.

The next day I had a tour of the observatory visiting the MAGIC, a pair of 17m  Gamma Ray photon detector dishes, Swedish Solar Observatory and 2.54m Isaac Newton Telescope.

Outer Space Time Lapse  (full sceen viewing is reomeended)

I got to spend two nights at the observatory and used the opportunity to make this time-lapse video with Gran Telescopio Canarias featured in the first half and MAGIC Telescopes in the second. There is a very effective sky protection law on the Island of La Palma and the sky looked magnificent without the dreaded light pollution seen elsewhere.

Virtual Tours

And of course I could not resist making 360-degree virtual tours:

GranTeCan

MAGIC

If you click on the Virtual Tour thumbnails at 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.

It was a truly great event where I met new friends and got to talk to some very interesting people. Getting over STARMUS withdrawal symptoms is no easy task!

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.

After a few experiments I found that this type of Sony-compatible remotes is best suited for the intervalometer because it has the longest range and uses 2xAAA batteries. I got mine on ebay.

Step 1: Remove the back cover

Unscrew two phillips head screws (one inside the battery chamber) and remove the back cover. Then remove the IR control board.

Step 2: Locate shutter button contacts

Locate where the Shutter Release Button (S) is on the keypad and trace the contacts on the board.

Turn the board over and identify the contacts where you can solder the wires on.

 Step 3: Solder the Shutter Release wires

This is pretty straightforward. You need a soldering iron and some rоsin core.

I also recommend to pre-solder the wire ends and scrape the contact pads with a knife gently before putting the rosin core on.

Step 4: Attach 2.5mm socket

Buy a 2.5mm female socket and solder the other end of the shutter release wires to the socket contacts

Step 5: Final assembly

Put it all back together and connect your intervalometer

Check out the images I took with Sony NEX-5 and my 22″ Newtonian reflector.

Discalimer: I am not affiliated with any of the manufactures or retailers of the devices featured in this tutorial

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

Lighthouse

Lagoon

If you click on the Virtual Tour thumbnails at 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.

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

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).

In the time-lapse below there are three galaxies (Magellanic Clouds and our own Milky Way) and shape of an elephant can be seen with some imagination in the rock formation on the left.

Meteors last a very short time and only appear in one frame. However trails from satellites and air-planes span across a few frames and most of the “shooting stars” in this time lapse are actually satellites or air-planes.

At the end of observing a friend of mine lent me his Pentax K-x DSLR and I put it into the focuser of my telescope. So here is my first ever image of a deep sky object through a telescope.

By all standards it is an average image of the Keyhole Nebula, however I had great fun taking it. My telescope is on a Dobsonian mount which is not considered suitable for astro-photography because it does not compensate for the Earth rotation. But given the large 22″ mirror and high camera sensitivity at ISO6400 I was able to limit the exposure to 6 seconds and avoid star trails. The result is not bad for such a short exposure time.

More images from Flinders
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