Pinnacles

Another night shot taken at the Pinnacles in the Nambung National Park, a couple of hundred kilometres north of Perth. It's a weird place - a thousand limestone monuments poking strangely out of the desert. Some are 3m high.

 

I thought the conditions were perfect - absolutely clear dark skies, nobody else around and very little light pollution - apart from a gibbous moon almost straight overhead which lit up the pinnacles beautifully but drowned out the detail of the Milky Way. Still, the Southern Cross is clearly visible in the centre of the photo and just above it, the Coalsack.

 

"The dark expanse of the Coalsack impressed prehistoric and renaissance stargazers. Aboriginal stargazers have known about the Coalsack for at least 40,000 years. Bark drawings found on Australia’s Groote Eylandt depicts the Coalsack as a fish speared by two brothers who are represented by the two brightest stars of Crux. Polynesians called the Coalsack 'Te Paniwi a Taewa', the Black Fish. Vespucci called it the 'Black Canopus'."

 

EXIF: 14mm; f/2.4; 8secs; ISO2500

Done