View allAll Photos Tagged magellanicclouds
20 x 13 seconds
35mm
ISO 5000
f/1.8
Stitched in MS ICE
The Milky Way sets below the Mars-like landscape of The Pinnacles Desert. This is a 20 shot panorama taken as the core sets below the western horizon. The Large Magellanic Cloud can be seen on the left of the image above the light pollution of Perth, approximately 200km (120mi) to the south.
Orion rising between the Magellanic Clouds and the Zodiacal Light.
Panorama made from 6 vertical images.
Not for the first time, the appearance of the two dwarf galaxies known as the “Magellanic Clouds” remind me of jellyfish, or similarly amorphous inhabitants of the ocean. Seeing them hovering over the Tasman Sea at Gerroa, Australia here in my photo makes that act of imagination a whole lot easier. The “Clouds” aren’t creatures, nor are they from the ocean, but are companions of our Milky Way galaxy, travelling with us through the Local Group of galaxies, yet visible to nocturnal folk here in the Southern Hemisphere.
To the upper-left of the Small Magellanic Cloud is what looks like an overgrown star, but is a globular star cluster–a big ball of stars, pretty much–with the unromantic name of 47 Tucanae. This bright and slightly fuzzy orb that I included in the photo is about 120 light-years in diameter, making it a massive ball of stars, indeed.
To produce this final photo, I shot two overlapping images & after editing those in Adobe Lightroom Classic, I stitched them together with the (now-defunct) application Autopano Pro. After stitching, I washed the composite frame through Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop (for noise reduction and improving some of the details). The two original frames that I took were shot with my Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.0, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 3200.
I’m not sure how long it’s been since I posted a Milky Way arch photo. I’ve had this one in the can for several months now, so figured it was time to get it in front of some eyeballs.
As well as the Milky Way my photo takes in two other galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Jupiter, Saturn & Mars are here as well, and I also caught a lot of green atmospheric airglow in the panorama.
The location I captured the sky at on this clear night was Seven Mile Beach, near Gerroa, Australia. I shot 71 overlapping images, with my camera mounted on a “Nodal Ninja” panoramic head.
I shot each of the 71 individual frames with my Canon EOS 6D camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.8, using an exposure time of 10 seconds @ ISO 6400.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Looking southward across Cuttagee Lake Bridge and upwards to the South Celestial Pole (no Pole Star for us southerners). The Milky Way is rising from a murky horizon with quite a bit of air glow. Som main features are marked by boxes (hover cursor over the frame). In a couple of weeks the galactic core will be making its annual appearance. The foreground is illuminated by my car's parking lights.
One image taken with an HD PENTAX-D FA 15-30mm f2.8 and Pentax Astrotracer with uncorrected distortion.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Island Bay, Wellington, New Zealand.
A shining bridge of stars across the heaven.
15-frame panorama starry sky portrait with Nikon D810 and PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f3.5D lens. I hope you will enjoy the sight of three galaxies in the sky.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
I am finally getting around to using my camera for some long exposures. I was lucky to get a beautiful clear night with no cloud or wind..for a change :-)
Nikon d5500
50mm
ISO 4000
f/2.2
Foreground: 7 x 25 seconds
Sky: 15 x 25 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
Hoya Red Intensifier filter
This is a 22 shot panorama of the Magellanic Clouds above Diamond Cottage in the Avon Valley, about an hour north east of Perth in Western Australia. I don't know much about this building, there's not really any info online and just a small sign at the location with the name 'Diamond Cottage'.
The Tasman Valley in the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand, is an amazing place to visit by day, but once night falls, I can honestly say it one of the most amazing night skies you will ever see. I recently spent a night under the stars there above the glacier lake. It was a spectacular view looking down the valley, especially when the Aurora Australis lit up the sky to the south. The bright band of the Milky Way spanned overhead from east to west, and there were so many shooting stars that night, I lost count - it was certainly one incredible night under the stars to remember!
This 305 megapixel panoramic image is made up of 42 photos stitched together to create the final image.
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copyright 2015 | Mark Gee | theartofnight.com
A countryside landscape at Poppethead Reserve under the night sky. The site is the historic Poppethead of the Aberdare Central Colliery at Kitchener, near Cessnock, in the Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.
I drove out to the back country area above Hanmer Springs on the South Island of New Zealand to capture this 360 degree seamless pano of the night sky.
There's quite a lot going on with this image - you have the Milky Way which can be seen arching over the landscape in the right of frame, and below that you can see a natural phenomena know as gravity waves. The glow in the centre of frame is from the lights of Christchurch 130km away, and to the left of that are the Magellanic Clouds, which are a duo of irregular dwarf galaxies visible only from the Southern Hemisphere. The faint triangular glow to the far left of frame is the Zodiacal Light, which is caused by sunlight scattered by space dust in the zodiacal cloud, and in this case, is seen just before morning twilight.
For the tech buffs out there, this image is a 218 megapixel image made up of a stitch of 28 individual images, which were shot on a Gigapan Epic Pro. The images were shot 4 rows vertically by 7 columns horizontally, each on a 24mm lens with an exposure of a 25 second shutter at f/2.8 with an ISO 6400. The whole pano took a total of 14 minutes to shoot with all the images.
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copyright 2014 | Mark Gee | theartofnight.com
Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Data acquired remotely using the Telescope Live CHI-4 telescope located at the El Sauce Observatory, Chile.
Telescope: ASA 500N Newtonian. 500mm aperture, focal length 1900mm, f/3.8
CCD Camera: Finger Lake Instruments FLI 16803. 4096 x 4096 array. 0.98 arc-seconds per pixel.
Equatorial Mount: ASA DDM85 direct drive.
Exposure:
Lum: 3 x 10m
RGB 2 x 10m per filter
Processed with Maxim DL, PixInsight and Photoshop CC 2020.
In the darkness of the Starry Night Sky under the Milky Way taken in Blayney, Central NSW, Australia.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
revisiting and reprocessing some photos we took in the Richtersvelt, South Africa in 2013. #flashbackfriday
Nikon d5100
50mm Nikkor Lens
f1.8
84 x 6 seconds
ISO 5000
Stitched in MS ICE
This is one of my first full panoramas shot with a 50mm prime lens. It came out of the stitching software at over one gigapixel! After some cropping I managed to get it down to 740 megapixels, so it's by far my biggest panorama to date. I had to experiment with Photoshop's save levels to try and get the final size under Flickr's 200mb limit. To be honest I can't see much difference between the highest save level of 12 and the level I saved this at, which was 9. The file size difference is huge though, 560mb vs 190mb.
This was shot at one of my favourite locations for astrophotography, The Pinnacles Desert about 2 hours north of my home city, Perth in Western Australia. This image covers more than 200 degrees of the night sky with the left side at around SSE and the right side around NNE. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are prominent on the left side of the image just above the light pollution from Perth. The foregound was light painted using a hand held spotlight.
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About
There is nothing more exciting than the night sky, and nothing more rewarding when you learn something new about it.
I love being out with nature, at dawn, dusk, or during the middle of the night. I find it amazing (in terms of photography more so) that the stars we see at night are emit light that has traveled millions 'light years' to reach us. When you pause for a moment and think about the light in a studio/strobe its instant, its right there, but when we look at the stars, we are looking at the past, something that took place millions of years ago, amazing!
So what did I learn?
Well, as previously mentioned, there is more than one way to find the celestial pole (the spot the stars spin around), all you need to do is find the 'Magellanic Clouds'
What the?
The Magellanic Clouds are two dwarf galaxies, and you can see them clearly here. Make an equilateral triangle, using the two clouds, the third point of which is the south celestial pole.
I'd love a 5D for Christmas, and a 16-35L, so I can shoot these with next to no noise ;P
Enjoy.
- Canon 50D.
- ISO 200, f5.6, 20 minutes, 10mm
- Sigma 10-20mm lens.
- Tripod.
Processing
- NR in Lightroom 2.2.
- Soft light layer in Photoshop 6.0.
- Colour dodge in Photoshop 6.0.
About the Magellanic Clouds.
The two Magellanic Clouds (or Nubeculae Magellani) are irregular dwarf galaxies, which are members of our Local Group of galaxies. Once they were thought to be orbiting our Milky Way galaxy. However, new research seems to indicate that this is not the case. The two galaxies are, Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).
The Magellanic Clouds were certainly known since the earliest times by the ancient Middle Eastern peoples. The first preserved mention of the Large Magellanic Cloud was by Persian astronomer Al Sufi, who in 964, in his Book of Fixed Stars, calls it al-Bakr, meaning "the White Ox", of the southern Arabs, and points out that while invisible from Northern Arabia and Baghdad, this object is visible from the strait of Bab el Mandeb, at 12°15' Northern latitude.
In Europe, they were first observed by Italian Peter Martyr and Andreas Corsali in the end of 15 century. Subsequently, it was reported by Antonio Pigafetta for the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan during the circumnavigation in 1519–1522. However, naming the clouds after Magellan did not become widespread until much later. In Bayer's Uranometria they are designated as 'NVBECVLA MAIOR' and 'NVBECVLA MINOR'; even in a 1756 French astronomer Lacaille's star map, they are designated as 'le Grand Nuage' and 'le Petit Nuage', (in both cases this means simply the "Large Cloud" and the "Small Cloud", in Latin or French).
The Large Magellanic Cloud and its neighbor and relative, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are conspicuous objects in the southern hemisphere, looking like separated pieces of the Milky Way to the naked eye. Roughly 21° apart in the night sky, the true distance between them is roughly 75,000 light-years. Until the discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy in 1994, they were the closest known galaxies to our own.
Observation and theoretical evidence suggest that the Magellanic Clouds have both been greatly distorted by tidal interaction with the Milky Way as they travel close to it.
The dark night sky with The Milky Way Galaxy filled with stars from Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
57 x 13 seconds
ISO 3200
35mm
f1.8
This is the last of my photos from Lake Dumbleyung and it's also my biggest pano yet, coming in at 165 megapixels.
As per the above, it consists of 57 individual photos stitched in PTGui covering approximately 220 degrees of the night sky. I've never taken a full panorama with my 35mm lens, they've always covered no more than about 100 degrees. It's quite a bit more work not only because I'm taking a lot more shots but also in stitching it together.........my pc actually shut itself down at one point! As per usual, the foreground was light painted using a hand held spotlight.
Seen from South Canterbury, New Zealand.
Cloud was obscuring the beams and I haven't yet figured out the best settings for either camera or lens when shooting aurora, but will continue to add ongoing attempts to my fledgling aurora set. If you're a fellow aurora photographer and want to chip in with some constructive advice, feel free :-)
The rural night sky filled with stars as the Aurora Australis begins in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
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. This panorama covers almost 360 degrees horizontally, and is made up of 28 individual shots, giving an overall image size of over 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 dwarf 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.
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copyright 2013 | markg.com.au
The night sky rural scene with Milky Way and Magellanic Cloud at Broke in the Hunter Region, NSW, Australia.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Camping on the Tasmanian East coast. Magellanic clouds shining bright overhead and thin clouds diffusing the Southern Cross above the trees.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Nikon d5500
50mm
ISO 3200
f/2.8
Foreground: 6 x 13 seconds
Sky: 12 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
Hoya Red Intensifier filter
This is an 18 image panorama of the Magellanic Clouds above a lone tree at a farm near Beverley, about 2 hours east of Perth in Western Australia.
Cape Palliser on the North Island of New Zealand is one incredible place to view the night sky. The only light in this remote and rugged location is the Cape Palliser lighthouse perched high above the coastline.
This image is a seamless 360 degrees panorama features our Milky Way galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Zodiacal Light which extends up from the horizon in the right side of the image.
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copyright 2015 | Mark Gee | theartofnight.com
The dark night sky with The Milky Way Galaxy filled with stars from Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the Milky Way night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 4000
f/2.8
Foreground: 7 x 25 seconds
Sky: 30 x 25 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 37 shot panorama of the Crux & Carina region of the Milky Way above The Pinnacles Desert, 2 hours north of Perth in Western Australia.
Joined by a couple of other astrophotographers, we made the trek up here to photograph the comet for the last time but it’s also that time of year where the core rises early in the morning so we were able to capture that as well as the summer arch and, as you see here, the Milky Way as it aligns vertically with the horizon.
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Here's a shot taken at nearly 4am at the Pinnacles, 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.
The moon had just set so the pinnacles in shot are lit by the parking lights of my car. In the night sky the Magellanic Clouds are clearly visible on the left. That dirty looking thing on the horizon on the right is the Milky Way.
Nobody knows exactly how these pinnacles were formed but there are three competing theories:
"The first theory states that they were formed as dissolutional remnants of the Tamala Limestone, i.e. that they formed as a result of a period of extensive solutional weathering (karstification). Focused solution initially formed small solutional depressions, mainly solution pipes, which were progressively enlarged over time, resulting in the pinnacle topography.
A second theory states that they were formed through the preservation of tree casts buried in coastal aeolianites, where roots became groundwater conduits, resulting in the precipitation of indurated (hard) calcrete. Subsequent wind erosion of the aeolianite then exposed the calcrete pillars.
A third proposal suggests that plants played an active role in the creation of the Pinnacles, based on the mechanism that formed smaller “root casts” in other parts of the world. As transpiration drew water through the soil to the roots, nutrients and other dissolved minerals flowed toward the root."
EXIF: 30secs; 14mm; f/2.8; ISO1600.