Stellar Australis Photography

Published: Amateur Astrophotography Ezine, Issue 34

17/11/2016

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PUBLISHED: 9th November 2016
Amateur Astrophotography Ezine, Issue 34
The folks that produce the fantastic Amateur Astrophotography Ezine were generous enough to do a little feature on my works in issue 34 of their online magazine. There are a couple pages on the equipment I use, and a few pages showing a selection of my astro and nightscape photography. I recommend taking a look at the magazine - for its great articles rather than for my feature, here.
You can flick through an excerpt of the magazine on the left to go through the my specific feature artic

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Lastest Sessions: Lake Dumbleyung and Denmark

25/10/2016

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Wow - since my last post I have visited a couple of amazing places. The first, Lake Dumbleyung which lies three hours from Perth, Western Australia. This fantastic lake is very scenic, featuring interesting rocks, clay bed, and old trees that break up the shoreline. Surrounding the lake are fields and bush, making it possible to shoot multiple different scenes. Like the image bottom right, I managed to capture the milkyway galaxy setting over the lake - although only two turned out in the end.
My second session was at William's Bay, Denmark (Western Australia, not the country). This was on a holiday and not a normal planned session. The moon was high and blotting out the milkyway, but I went anyway. An amazing coastline, and I got to walk the beach under the moonlight - totally deserted except for me.
All (good) images have been put into my Nightscape 2016 gallery. Browse through and take a look!

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Session: Six Nebulae of September 2016

17/9/2016

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All six nebulae were imaged on the one night session on 1st September 2016. Well...astrophotography isn't a race, so six targets is actually not so good - usually I only do up to two, but quantity beat out quality in this session. The large wide field image of the Milkyway galaxy was done in July 2016.

So, anyway I've composed all the images into one - and shown where they are in the night sky with reference to the bright Milkyway, for those who are interested or are otherwise unsure about where they lie in relation to each other. Some of these nebulae can typically be viewed with binoculars under dark skies (albeit a lot smaller), although to me they appear to be dull grey smudges.

You can see (and download) images of each individual from my gallery of astro photos for 2016, located here.

All images of nebulae were made using a Skywatcher Esprit 120ED and Canon EOS6D (unmodified).

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Session: Nambung National Park and the Rising Core

7/6/2016

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A few hours before I was at work in an ordinary office in the city (actually Rio Tinto's remote mining operations center). A few hours later I'm here at my favourite nightscape location at the Pinnacles in Nambung national park, Western Australia - beholding the core of the galaxy rising above the desert and monoliths.

This is my favourite time of year, as the milky way's core is close to the horizon and I can use my higher zoom lenses without an impractical number of shots / mosaic (in this case an 85mm prime lens). The higher the zoom, the more "dominating" it makes the galaxy appear in the sky (i.e. bigger).

Some of the photos are included in this post - otherwise check out my nightscape gallery for the rest.

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Image: On the Shores of Ancient Earth

26/3/2016

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This is a stitch of 15 shots with a Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens (@f/1.8) using an EOS6D. All shots were at ISO3200 for 30 seconds. This makes it a bit tricky for the stitching software, even when I used an iOptron tracking mount to keep the stars in the sky from trailing, as the interface between the sky and ground is usually not handled very well requiring some manual alignment. The final image was so large that couldn't even save it in Photoshop as it breached the 2GB limit. Even on this reduce resolution image you can zoom in heaps to see all the details in the stars and foreground.

Towards the end of my trip to the Peel region, Western Australia, I revisited the Thrombolites on Lake Clifton located at the north end of Yalgorup National Park. Thrombolites are built by tiny micro-organisms whose ancesters are believed to be one of the earliest known forms of life on Earth. They convert the fresh groundwater which is high in calcium carbonate into these dome like rocks that reside at the lake's edge. There are now few places left that Thrombolites remain.

Last time I photographed here all the Thromobolites were under water, but now at the waning of summer the lake's water is low revealing them all in this eerie alien like landscape of dome rocks and mud. Taken after midnight, this image shows the southern milkyway night sky arcing over the prehistoric scene. At the very top (and suffering a fair bit of lens distortion) is the great Carina nebula looking like a pink flower. Tracing down there are a number of open clusters, like IC26012 "southern Pleiades" and NGC3532. Further down is the southern cross constellation, and then the dark sploge of the Coal Sack nebula. And then a little below are the two bright stars of Alpha and Beta Centaurai.

You can view and download a larger version of this image here!

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Image: Ascension

26/3/2016

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You can view and download a larger version of this image here!

Beside the dry lake Newnham, Western Australia I caught the milkyway rising nearly vertically from the bush-fire ravaged Peel region. With my favourite 50mm lens you can really make the galaxy shine like a heavenly waterfall filled with the sparkling of stars uncountable.

Standing amidst blackened bushes and trees I hoped to get an interesting affect with my flash leaving radial shadows in the foreground darkness.

This is a stitch of 13 shots with a Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens (@f/1.8) using an EOS6D. All shots were at ISO3200 for 30 seconds. This makes it a bit tricky for the stitching software, even when I used an iOptron tracking mount to keep the stars in the sky from trailing, as the interface between the sky and ground is usually not handled very well requiring some manual alignment. Still not happy with it, but its not too bad either.

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Image: Into the Dark Forest of Night

17/3/2016

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Ok, its a pretty crap title, but I couldn't think of a better one at the time. To view and download this image, as well as all my other images in the series from Lake Newnham, go here.

The Peel region, Western Australia, recently suffered bush-fires which left amongst various tragedies blackened and leafless trees and shrubs. Walking into them in the darkness at night is quite an experience, one can almost imagine that they are haunted and terrifying. Thankfully, I have walked alone in many a dark sky now and enjoy the experience rather than fearful of it - which is fortunate otherwise nightscape photography may not be the best hobby if you are afraid of the darkness.
Whilst other places there are often night noises (insects, small animals), this place is unusually quiet, no doubt due to the lack of vegetation and thus little food for critters. Just the gentle night breeze and the faint star-light...
This shot a stitch of 3 shots with a Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens on a Canon EOS6d.

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Image: Pillar of Stars

16/3/2016

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You can view and download this image, as well as other images in this series from my visit to Lake Newnham here.

At last, after a long drought I finally got the opportunity to go out and take some nightscapes! In this shot I'm standing on the edge of a dry lake (Lake Newnham) in Western Australia's Peel region. The outer edge of the galaxy stands tall, with the Eta Carina nebula prominent as the pink patch at the very top, the southern cross constellation and dark coal sack nebula close to center.
This site has semi-dark skies, you can see the visible effects of light pollution as the yellow glows on the horizon, although before processing the entire image was washed with yellow glow.
This is a mosaic of 9 shots with a 50mm f/1.2 lens on a Canon EOS6d. I took 2 x shots of the foreground with a large amount of overlap, and 7 x shots of the sky (using a tracking mount). All shots were at ISO1600 for 30 seconds. Zoom in, there is a lot of detail.

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Location: Summary of Astrophotography and Nightscape Locations

11/3/2016

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I've recently completed my "expeditions" section of my website, which details locations that I've been to for astrophotography and nightscapes sessions. Currently this page has a summary of all locations (all in Western Australia - sorry to the rest of the world), rating and high level comments and notes - but will eventually expand to include detailed descriptions and site photographs. You can go straight to this page via this link, or just use the navigation bar above.

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Image: On the Shores of Infinity - Redux

5/3/2016

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It's been months since I last did some nightscape photography, and I'm getting restless. In the meantime I've reprocessed a scene that I did last November, sorry for re-posting it but often my first attempt at processing is rushed as I'm too impatient and usually can't wait to share it with everyone. Anyhow, this one I spent more time to improve the colour balance and trying to enhance the milkyway from the significant atmospheric effects when close to the horizon.
Hangover Bay being around 30 degrees south latitude means that the setting galaxy is horizontal when it is reasonably close to the horizon. This makes for some great opportunities - but the closer to the horizon the more faded the galaxy as you end up shooting through more atmosphere (pesky atmosphere - what is it good for :). In Western Australia, this also means shooting over the Indian Ocean - if only I could get the waves to stay still in between shots, makes post-processing the mosaics of the foreground "interesting".
This is a large mosaic of 25 shots with a 50mm f/2 lens on a Canon EOS6d. I took 10 x shots of the foreground with a large amount of overlap, and 15 x shots of the sky (using a tracking mount). All shots were at ISO1600 for 30 seconds. The original final image was a whopping 17391 x 6010 pixels, but google can't handle that so had to reduce it significantly. But zoom in, there is a lot of detail.
I'll put this revised version at full resolution shortly in my gallery, available to download.

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<<Previous

Published: Amateur Astrophotography Ezine, Issue 34

Lastest Sessions: Lake Dumbleyung and Denmark

Session: Six Nebulae of September 2016

Session: Nambung National Park and the Rising Core

Image: On the Shores of Ancient Earth

Image: Ascension

Image: Into the Dark Forest of Night

Image: Pillar of Stars

Location: Summary of Astrophotography and Nightscape Locations

Image: On the Shores of Infinity - Redux

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