View allAll Photos Tagged magellanicclouds
This image was shot in one of my favourite 'dark sky' locations at Cape Palliser on the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand. It is a panorama made up of 28 individual shots, giving an overall image size of 275 megapixels. The photo shows the Milky Way high in the sky stretching from east to west. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds can be seen below the arch of the Milky Way. These two objects are irregular dwalf galaxies and are only visible from the southern hemisphere. The light below the Milky Way to the left is the Cape Palliser Lighthouse, and the small glow on the horizon to the right is the Queen Mary 2 Cruise Ship en-route for Wellington, New Zealand.
This is one of a pair of photographs that I took of the stars around the South Celestial Pole. The web links (URL's) for the pair are given below. This was a "point star" photograph with an 8 second exposure, whilst the other was a "star trail" photograph with a 34 minute exposure.
As far as the motivation for taking these photographs was concerned, it was almost a case of "because I could". But really, its always both more complicated and simpler than that! The results delight me, disappoint me, surprise me, astonish me, educate me, calm me, ... all at once. I even enjoy the act the taking the photographs - a consequence of the heft and the mechanical controls of my Hasselblad 500C/M camera - born well before the digital era but engineered in such a way that a modern digital back can be used in place of film.
I took a similar pair of photographs at this time of the morning from this location 3 months ago (URL's below). In this timeframe, the stars have appeared to rotate clockwise by 90 degrees. The notable features in the scene are but few when compared with the North Celestial Pole. The brightest star, towards the upper right corner, is Achernar. The smudge one third out from the centre towards 4 o'clock is the Small Magellanic Cloud, whilst the smudge on the other side of the centre towards 10 o'clock is the Large Magellanic Cloud. Both of these are galaxies, composed of dozens of nebulae and star clusters. The building is our apartment block.
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URL's for this pair of point star and star trail photographs (September 2016)...
Point star image on Flickr ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/29592098970/
Star trail image on Flickr ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/29886074935/
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URL's for a previous pair of point star and star trail photographs (June 2016) ...
Point star image on Flickr ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/27092362483/
Star trail image on Flickr ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/27424551430/
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[ Location - Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia ]
Photography notes ...
The photograph was taken using the following hardware configuration ...
(Year of manufacture indicated in braces where known.)
- Hasselblad 500C/M body (1994).
- Hasselblad CFV-50c Digital Back for Hasselblad V mount camera.
- Hasselblad Focusing Screen for the CFV-50c digital back, with focusing prism and crop markings.
- Hasselblad 45 Degree Viewfinder PME-45 42297 (2001).
- Hasselblad Carl Zeiss lens - Distagon 40mm f/4 CF T* FLE (1996).
- Hasselblad 93mm 1x HZ-0 Filter.
- Hasselblad 093/40 Hood/Filter holder for 40mm CF, CFE, CFi, CFE IF lenses.
I acquired the photograph (8272 x 6200 pixels) with an ISO of 1600, exposure time of 8 seconds, and aperture of f/4.0
Post-processing ...
Finder - Removed the CF card from the camera digital back and placed it in a Lexar 25-in-1 USB card reader. Then used Finder on my MacBook Air to download the raw image file (3FR extension) from the card.
Lightroom - Imported the 3FR image.
Lightroom - Used the Map module to add the location details to the EXIF header.
Lightroom - Applied various basic lighting and color adjustments in the Develop module. The general processing objectives / strategy that I use with photographs of the night sky is as follows ...
- Adjust the geometry (e.g., perspective, straighten, crop).
- Adjust the White Balance.
- Increase the definition of features.
- Prevent the whites from becoming overexposed.
Lightroom - Specifically ...
Lightroom - In the Develop module, I applied Preset 20160923-003 that represented the settings used to process the companion star trail photograph.
Lightroom - Made various small adjustments to obtain a better lighting and color match to the companion star trail photograph.
Lightroom - Saved the Develop module settings as preset 20160923-012.
Lightroom - Output the image as a JPEG image using the "Maximum" quality option (8272 x 6200 pixels).
PhotoSync - Copied the JPEG file to my iPad Mini for any final processing, review, enjoyment, and posting to social media.
@MomentsForZen #MomentsForZen #MFZ #Hasselblad #500CM #CFV50c #Lightroom #Sky #Night #BlueHour #Stars #SouthCelestialPole #MagellanicCloud #MagellanicClouds #LargeMagellanicCloud #SmallMagellanicCloud #LMC #SMC #Achernar
An uncropped early evening image taken with an IRIX 15mm f2.4 Blackstone lens on a Pentax K1 with Astrotracer.
View to the South from Mimosa Rocks National Park, southern NSW, Australia. The Southern Cross with the conspicuous dark Coal Sack Nebula lies just above the horizon with the two pointers β and α Centaurus to its right. The Greater and Lesser Magellanic clouds dominate the top of the frame, with Canopus to the left of them. The Milky Way extends upwards to the left through Carina and into Canis Major with Sirius peeping through the tree. The bright lights on the far right horizon are part of the coastal village of Tathra.
The Large Magellanic Cloud Central.
Central Region of The Large Magellanic Cloud.
Mosaic Panels: 3
Exposures per mosaic panel: R:5 hours + Ha:5 hours , B:5 hours + OIII: 5 hours (20 hours per tile, 60 hours total)
Total Field Covered: 240 x 130 arcminutes.
Dates: 12th, 13th, 22nd and 23rd November, 2nd, 3rd, 12th and 13th December 2009.
Location: Gold Coast, Queensland.
Processing:
Sub-Image calibration and per-filter colour image sigma rejected addition with CCDStack.
Background correction using the PixInsight software's Dynamic Background Extraction Tool.
Green Synthesis, RGB combination, mosaic assembly, levels and Adobe RGB 1998 colourspace conversion with Adobe Photoshop CS4.
Notes:
This image was an experiment in dealing with light pollution from my site by blending Narrowband filters with RGB and synthesizing Green, usually the most problematic colour.
Using Ha and OIII filters to limit the earthly glows and blending the flat backgrounds from these with standard Red and Blue filters.
For this particular image, being a mosaic, there is approximately 60 hours of exposures here without taking any Green or SII, which would have required another 30 hours of exposures in this case.
In an attempt to limit light pollution influences and also reduce the total amount of time needed to take all the exposures for this three-panel, pseudo RGB image, the Green channel was synthesised from the combined R = R+Ha and B= B+OIII images.
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ106ED
Focal Length: 390mm
Camera: SBIG ST10XE
Pixels: 2184 x 1472 x 6.7um
2010 Royal Observatory Greenwich -Astronomy Photographer of the Year shortlist.
My two-week holiday has ended and I’m back in the big smoke of Sydney, Australia, with the other 5 million or so people who live here. Even though I had cloudy, grey skies for most of my break I’d still rather be back there on the coast! On the last two nights my wife & I drove to Australia’s capital city, Canberra, to play tourist and visit some friends.
One of the friends we visited was Ian Williams (www.facebook.com/ianmwillo) and his family in their Canberra home. On Saturday night Ian took me out to shoot nightscape images in some of the many square kilometres of bushland that’s pretty much on his doorstep. While driving to the spot where this shot was taken I got an alert on my phone, telling me that the ISS (International Space Station) would be passing over us within the hour. Once we were both set up and had worked out our foreground lighting (close enough to each other so we wouldn’t lose contact but far enough apart to not wash out each other’s shots) NASA was kind enough to have the largest man-made object in space do its thing and orbit right over us.
The ISS made its pass in the part of the sky where the Magellanic Clouds were hanging in the darkness. The dry air made for very clear seeing and my little Manfrotto “Lumimuse” LED lamp did nicely at lighting up the gum tree in the foreground. Over at the lower left the Southern Cross and the dark “Coal Sack” nebula are at about the 7:30 position on the sky. To the right of the Small Magellanic Cloud is the globular cluster 47 Tucanae.
This single frame was shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 15 second exposure @ ISO 6400.
A shining cloud lit by the Villarrica lights faces the Magellanic Clouds..
This picture was taken in Ñancul, 6 km outside Villarrica, Región de la Araucanía, Chile.
Technical Parameters:
30 s / ISO 1250 / f2,8 / 14 mm
Post-production:
Camera Raw 6.7 and Adobe Photoshop CS5
25 second exposure with the Fujifilm X-T2 and Samyang 12mm at f2. ISO800! Amazing skies on safari in South Africa. Processed with PixInsight from raw->tif file and a slight curves tweak in Photoshop afterwards. I am amazed by the amount of data PixInsight has pulled out of this!
This photography tour will span over ten days and will take you to some of the most amazing locations in South Island of New Zealand. From snow-capped mountains of the Southern Alps, lakes, waterfalls, river stream, to the coastline with too many highlights to list out. But what is guaranteed is that you will be presented with most amazing scenes during the trip!
We can reasonably expect clear skies during the selected date with long period of visibility for Milky Way. Unique star features include the Southern Cross and Magellanic Clouds, Satellite Galaxies to the Milky Way that are only visible in the southern hemisphere. And also, it is during peak autumn colour – the most suitable time to capture the explosion of colour. This is the best time before the leaves turn completely brown.
P/s: This is the trip for landscape photography lovers. We are landscapers ourselves thus we know exactly what you want from the trip. Not a mere sightseeing-snap shooting but 10 days of pure unadulterated landscape photography bliss!
For reservation and more details, click HERE!
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Looking at today’s date, I see that November is now just over a week away, bringing longer and hotter days to us southern hemisphere folk. In coastal areas, like where I live, those longer, hotter days mean more chance of cloudy nights. If the weather can do the right thing for me once this month’s full moon passes, I should have one more opportunity to get some Milky Way core photos for the year. After that, I’ll be looking for southern summer sky objects to photograph.
The Magellanic Clouds, the two large, fuzzy and misty blobs in the sky in my photo, are usually high on the list of summer nightscape targets. For most of where Australia’s population lives the Magellanic Clouds are visible all year round but don’t get as much photographic fame as the Milky Way’s core does. I photographed these two dwarf galaxies in early September as they seemingly hung in the air over the Norfolk Island pine trees at Tuross Head, Australia. I also captured some satellite trails at the right-hand edge of the shot, as well as a meteor trail flashing between two of the pine trees.
I created this image from two slightly overlapping single photos, which I shot with my trusty Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, through a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, using a 15-second exposure @ ISO 3200.
Everytime I spend a night on a plane I try to take some pictures of the wing and the stars around it. Only to remember that fantastic view you have flying through the darkness seeing the wonderful night sky.
It's a 10 seconds shot at 17mm, f2,8 and iso 1600.
The Milky Way night sky filled with stars over the rural countryside in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
An ultrawide-angle view of the Milky Way seen from the southern hemisphere, from Australia, March 21, 2014. This takes in most of the far southern Milky Way, from Orion at far right, to Canis Major, Puppis, Vela, and to Carina and Crux at far left. Jupiter is the bright object at upper right. Sirius and Canopus are right and left of centre. The Large Magellanic Cloud is at lower left. The vast Gum Nebula complex is at centre.
This is a stack of 5 x 5 minute exposures at f/4 with the Canon 15mm lens and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1000. I shot this March 21, 2014 from the Warrumbungles Motel, Coonabarabra, NSW, Australia.
The rural night sky filled with stars as the Aurora Australis begins in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
After a few tries I reckon I can't get a result too much better than this. The way I took the photos is the main reason why I can't get the horizon to look less "choppy", nothing to do with control points or projection in Hugin. Oh well, I won't complain … ;-)
Just a little right of the location from the other photo posted today but this time showing both Magellanic Clouds. The reason I was at this location was to take a series of shots for a star trails composition but the wind was insanely strong and the camera had been buffeted on half the photos in that series so the trails were all over the place. Oh well, I'm just going to have to go again :)
Nikon d5100
30 seconds
f2.8
ISO 3200
11mm
Image contains example(s) of:
galaxy formation
galaxies
galaxy clusters
nebulae
interstellar clouds
stars
quasars
a white dwarf
black hole
supernova
globular clusters
stellar stream
This work is fully licensed for commercial and non-commercial activities. Nothing in this image was taken from work created by any other photographer or entity and is in its totality a work by Rennett Stowe.
The Milky Way in the southern hemisphere sky from Vela at top right to Centaurus at bottom left. ..At left of centre is the huge Gum Nebula emission nebula bubble. At centre is the Carina Nebula. At bottom are the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds Crux is left of centre. Alpha and Beta Centauri are left of Crux. ..This is a stack of 5 x 3-minute tracked exposures with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII camera at ISO 2000 and 14mm Rokinon lens at f/2.5. On the iOptron Sky-Tracker, from Tibuc Gardens Cottage, Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia.
An ultrawide-angle view of the Milky Way seen from the southern hemisphere, from Australia, March 21, 2014. This takes the far southern Milky Way, from Orion at far right, to Canis Major, Puppis, Vela, and to Carina at far left. Sirius and Canopus are upper right and lower left of centre. The Large Magellanic Cloud is at lower left. The vast Gum Nebula complex is at centre.
This is a stack of 8 x 4 minute exposures at f/2.8 with the Rokinon 14mm lens and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 800 I shot this March 21, 2014 from the Warrumbungles Motel, Coonabarabra, NSW, Australia.
I composed this photo to look like some sort of precious jewel in the sky, framed by twisting tree branches, almost like a glowing gem set in a royal crown. A thorny crown. There are many aspects of photography that fascinate me and one of them is being able to set two objects in a photo like this to make them look like they’re close together even when they’re not. The tree branches were about five metres up above where my camera was placed. The jewel framed in the shot, the Large Magellanic Cloud, was around 163,000 light-years distant, or around 308,400,000,000,000,000,000 times further away than the tree.
If you go a’Googling you can find some very detailed photos of the Large (and its sibling the Small) Magellanic Cloud, showing many more stars and nebulae than you can see in this shot taken with my DSLR and a basic 50mm lens. To the lower left of the Cloud is the bright green smudge of light that’s known as the Tarantula Nebula, or its technical name of 30 Doradus. This is a nebula that has at its centre a star cluster that has an estimated mass of 450,000 times that of our Sun. You don’t have to know any of those facts to enjoy its beauty, fortunately.
A single shot captured with Canon EOS 6D Mk II, Canon 50mm @ f/2.2, 8.0 sec @ ISO 6400.
The Small Magellanic Cloud and Large Magellanic Cloud in the Night Sky at Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
I REALLY wanted to photograph the night sky while I was in South Africa, but the conditions didn't play out so favorably (and I didn't want to get eaten / murdered). I did, however, managed to get a couple things. This is a Magellanic cloud, visible only in the Southern Hemisphere. Kinda cool!
More Southern Sky. This is the southern end of the Milky Way, featuring the Southern Cross and Coal Sack Nebula
Australia’s indigenous peoples are very well regarded for their astronomical history and knowledge and for how they integrated that knowledge into their culture, hunting, navigation and lore. The “Galactic Emu” is probably the best-known of the night sky features used by our aborigines. Follow a New Zealand nightscape photographer on Instagram, Facebook or on the wider web and you’ll see mention of the “Galactic Kiwi”, an asterism that honestly does look like a giant Kiwi bird in the sky reminding Australians that our smaller neighbour is there looking over us for a large part of the year.
I’m adding a new heavenly bird to the flock today with my post of the Galactic Owl’s Eyes. It’s only been a few days since I posted my “Eye of God” photo to Instagram and Facebook, I know, but after posting this new two-eyed version to some Facebook groups I saw how well it was received so am posting here for you. As I noted in the original “Eye of God” post this is a stitched image made up from 150 single photos. To create it I set my camera on a Nodal Ninja panoramic mount and took 360 degrees’ worth of photos then tilted the mount up some and took another full circle of shots. This was repeated until I had covered the whole sky.
The stitching software that I use has many options for creating a panorama and the “Little Planet” projection is one that I’ve very rarely used. The black circle in the centre, resulting from not taking photos below the horizon line, looked so much like the pupil of an eye that I decided to take the plunge and post the original one-eyed version. Duplicating that original image as a layer in Photoshop then flipping the new one horizontally took very little time and produced the two-eyed version.
Each image was captured with a Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 15 sec @ ISO 6400.
Southern Cross、Magellanic Cloud, Milky Way, Eta Carina Nebula in Bryndwr、NZ.
クライストチャーチはブラインドワのレントハウスから撮影しました。
南半球で人気の星野写真のターゲットがほとんどカバーできたアングルです。
つまりサザン・オールスターズ・・・
A 360° fish-eye panorama of the southern hemisphere autumn sky, on March 31, 2017, taken from Cape Conran on the Gippsland Coast of Victoria, Australia at a latitude of 37° South. ..Orion and Sirius are at top, oriented as we are used to seeing them in the northern sky in our winter season. Below Sirius is Canopus, and below it are the two Magellanic Clouds, Large and Small (LMC and SMC). At bottom along the southern Milky Way are the stars of Carina, Crux, and Centaurus, and the dark lanes of the Milky Way creating the “Dark Emu” rising out of the ocean. At far left is Jupiter. ..Some faint red airglow tints the sky. ..This is at stitch of 7 segments, each shot with the 14mm Rokinon lens, in portrait orientation, at f/2.5 for 45 seconds each, at ISO 3200 with the Canon 6D. Stitched with PTGui with spherical fish-eye projection. ....
The Milky Way has several smaller galaxies that are travelling through space with it (well, with us, in fact). These are known as “satellite galaxies” or “companion galaxies” and of the approximately sixty that have been detected only two are visible with the unaided eye. Named the “Magellanic Clouds” (for Ferdinand Magellan, on whose round-the-world voyage they were cataloged) you can see them at the left of this image, looking like two hazy blobs in the sky. I always find it a bit of a buzz to capture the Magellanic Clouds in the same image as their much bigger brother and hope that you get the same buzz seeing the three galaxies together in a photo like this.
Unless you’re shooting with a very wide-angle lens you can’t get all three galaxies into the one shot but you can use the process of “stitching” to finish up with such a wide photo. For this image I shot thirteen overlapping images and then used software to blend them (via stitching) into this single scene.
Each of the photos that make up today’s image were shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400.
This is just a few kilometres from the Chilean border and here the sleeping and lodging options are almost non-existent, and being so remote and in a desert you’d never expect to find it either, except that there is one decent option here called Tayka del Desierto.
This high-altitude service is where I gazed in awe at this incredibly clear sky. The stars seemed closer than I’ve ever seen them, and with the lodge’s few lights being the only man-made light sources the light pollution was non-existent.
It’s well below freezing at night at this altitude, and staying outside is like a cold and windy Scandinavian winter! Fortunately I could stay warm in my room, waiting for the camera to do its work.
The 2 blobs or smears close to the center are the Small and the Great Magellanic Clouds, two satellite galaxies to the Milky Way – not visible to the dwellers on the northern hemisphere. Thus, the centre of the circle seen in this photo is the southern celestial pole.
I've deliberately set the white balance to how our eyes perceive the stars - almost no colors.
Altitude: 4528 metres.
A conspicuous group: The Milky Way, and both Magellanic Clouds (Large & Small, LMC & SMC respectively). Near the bottom right corner, a menacing cloud. It was gone a few minutes later.
Las cosas obvias en la imagen son 3 galaxias: La Vía Láctea y las 2 Nubes de Magallanes (La Gran Nube LMC y la Pequeña Nube SMC).
Cerca de la esquina inferior derecha, una nube amenazaba con arruinar la observación. Después de unos minutos desapareció.
Photographing the Milky Way as seen near Rockleigh, South Australia. With a satellite flying through the sky, and the light pollution from near by Murray Bridge, I think this shot highlights how much the light humans produce now obstructs the stunning view of light that has travelled for thousands or millions of years to get here. For this reason, I haven't tried to remove the light pollution in this instance.
Olympus OM-D E-M1
7-14mm f2.8
7mm, f2.8, 25 seconds, ISO 3200
Processed in Lightroom, roughly following the approach set out in Ian Norman's 'How to Process Milky Way Astrophotography in Adobe Lightroom' tutorial from Lonely Speck.
DARK SKY PROJECT Photo taken by Igor Hoogerwerf - Location: University of Canterbury Mt John Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. For some stunning Dark Sky Project time-lapse animations, please refer to Dark Sky Project on You Tube.
Looking at this photo and seeing the three dead trees standing amongst the many living ones, I started pondering the social guideline that says to “not speak ill of the dead”. If trees could have thoughts and feelings, how would the living regard the dead ones? Would they look at them shyly, too embarrassed to be seen gazing at the revered remains of their ancestors? Instead, perhaps the younger and cocksure trees would sneer at them for not having been able to “go the distance”; for giving up the fight.
Fanciful thoughts, for sure, but consider all the more the fact that a number of the stars you see in this photo could have been dead for many years, even for centuries. The starlight that our eyes detect is what has reached us at the instant we are looking, after having travelled through space for varying distances over proportional lengths of time. If a star is four light-years away, then we’re seeing the light as it was four years ago when it left that star. If a hundred light-years distant, then our view is of one hundred year-old light. A simple look at the numbers says that at least some of the stars in this photo are dead now, despite looking alive and alight to us. As with the trees, there are many dead stars amongst the living.
A single frame, shot with Canon EOS 6D, Samyang 14mm @ f/2.8, 30 sec @ ISO 6400.