View allAll Photos Tagged magellanicclouds
The MOPRA radio telescope facility is located near Coonabarabran / Siding Spring Observatory / Warrumbungle National Park in NSW, Australia. It is 22 metres in diameter and is operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
A bit of interference "noise" from the scope is apparent.
Taken in April, 2018 during the inaugural Astrophotography / iTelescope Masterclass held by Dr. Christian Sasse at Siding Spring Observatory.
Timelapse shot on April 18, 2018.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 6400
f/2.8
Foreground: 13 x 10 seconds
Sky: 43 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
Nantong Foric H-Alpha 20nm narrowband filter
This is a 56 shot panorama of the 'Summer' Milky Way over Lake Ninan, two hours north east of Perth in Western Australia. It stretches from the California Nebula on the left side of the image to the Crux/Carina region on the right, including the Magellanic Clouds.
This is the first panorama I have taken with a dedicated H-Alpha filter, chiefly to greatly enhance the Ha regions of the night sky. This particular filter was the only Ha type I could find which screws onto the end of the lens, all others were clip in filters which require the complete remove of the lens in order to install them. Not particularly conducive to the multi shot panormas I normally take.
Aside from the regions already noted, other prominent features in the image are the Gum Nebula, the large red nebula to the left of the LMC. Near the middle of the image is the Seagull Nebula and to its left is the very well known Orion Nebula and Barnard's Loop, with the circular Lambda Orionis below it.
I have been to Lake Ninan many times but this is the first time I've seen it almost completely dry. There were some quite nice pressure ridges around the edges of the lake which was unexpected and, again, something I've never seen here before. I'll post those images later.
Under a starry night sky at Putty Beach on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia with Palm Beach and Sydney lights shining in the distance.
The Wainuamata coast near Wellington, New Zealand is rugged and exposed, but also very picturesque, and a location I've been wanting to photograph at night for a while now. I finally got the perfect night to do so, and hiked the 3.5km with my camera gear out to Baring Head, where I set up overlooking the beach and the Wainuiomata River. The Milky Way was stunning this night as it rose towards the east, and the sky was tinted green with air glow as the distant galaxies of the Malleganic Clouds hovered above. This image is a panorama made up of 24 images stitched together, and was shot on a Epic Gigapan Pro panoramic head. Each image had an exposure time of 25 seconds at f/2.8 ISO 6400, and was shot on a Canon 6d with a 24mm focal length.
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copyright 2015 | Mark Gee | theartofnight.com
The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 6400
f/2.8
Foreground: 11 x 6 seconds
Sky: 30 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
Nantong Foric H-Alpha 20nm narrowband filter
This is a 41 shot panorama of the Crux and Carina region of the Milky Way above the dry surface of Lake Ninan, 2 hours north east of Perth in Western Australia.
The Magellanic Clouds–the fuzzy and bright puffs in the top half of my photo–seem to be hanging in space over these two headstones in the graveyard of the Tangmangaroo Anglican Church near Yass, Australia. These celestial siblings are known as the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, respectively, and are dwarf galaxies that travel through our part of the universe along with our Milky Way.
The light from the atmospheric feature called airglow was backlighting the scene with its bottle-green glow and was so intense that I needed to reduce its saturation when I edited the image before posting. I lit the monuments and foreground growth with some LED banks, and a passing truck’s high-beam lights shone through as I had the camera’s shutter open, giving a blue-white look to the tree and grasses behind the cross.
I shot eight single-frame photos that I then blended in both Adobe Photoshop and Starry Landscape stacker to create a final image with the foreground elements and the beautiful starry sky all in focus. Each of the eight individual frames was shot using my Canon EOS 6D camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.8, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 3200.
An old mining rig shaft under the night sky with milky way. Poppethead Reserve is a Regional Park. The site is the historic Poppethead of the Aberdare Central Colliery at Kitchener, near Cessnock, in the Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.
Here in Australia, we recognise our seasons as commencing on the first day of a calendar quarter. Winter begins on the first day of June. Spring, the first of September. With today being the second of December, we’ve already had one full day of summer pass by. That means it is six months since I was shivering through a winter night, shooting nightscape images using these silos in the foreground. It certainly doesn’t feel like it was that long ago!
With the Milky Way’s galactic core now lost in the brightness of the evening twilight–Milky Way season is over–you will likely see more posts from me and other nightscape photographers featuring star-trails and deep-sky objects.
I had planned to shoot at least two hours worth of star-trails at the silos last night, but a very thick fog floated in and put an end to that. The trails I did get were long enough to make a good image from, and I even achieved a result I’d set out to get, which was some trails showing between the silos and through the holes in the perishing roof. There is a fog-piercing light a few hundred metres along the road from the silos, and it provided an eerie glow to back-light the scene.
To create this final image I shot 123 single-frame photos in 55 minutes. I captured each of those frames with a Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/2.8, exposed for 25 seconds @ ISO 800.
Here is another shot that we captured of the Small Magellanic Cloud and the object on the lower right-hand side is the 47 Tuc NGC 104 a very large globular cluster, We used My new canon DSLR 600D ESO camera attached to our Meade LX90-8-inch SCT with tracking. This is a raw image with no processing involved.
A picture of the shower stall under the stars in Khutse Game Reserve, Botswana. You can see my feet peeking out the bottom, though the water wasn't on at the time. This goes down as one of the best all-time outdoor experiences I've ever had. The camp had turned in, and I decided to catch a late shower before calling it a night. For those that don't know, you pour the water into a hanging bucket, and then you just open the valve to let the water (slowly) drain out of the bucket down onto you. It's effective. The most memorable aspect was being able to look up at the expansive sky at the time. The photo doesn't do justice to how pronounced the stars were directly above the shower.
A quick google search shows the lions frequently visiting these stalls. Didn't happen on our visit...unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view...
www.google.com/search?q=lion+coming+out+of+shower+africa&...
Thanks for looking!
_________________________________________________
Comments and constructive criticism always appreciated.
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35mm
53 x 10 seconds
ISO 5000
f/1.8
Stitched in MS ICE
This is a 53 image panorama taken at Harvey Dam, approximately 125km (100mi) south of Perth in Western Australia. The Large & Small Magellanic Clouds can be see near the horizon just right of centre. The light pollution is coming from the Worsley Alumina Refinery approximately 15km away.
A handful of sheep stood atop this hill, silhouetted by the lights of the rural city of Goulburn, Australia, while I photographed the starry and cloud-free sky at the Taralga wind farm in mid-November of this year. High overhead and looking like a tuft of wool, cut free and discarded by a shearer’s blades, the amorphous glow from the billions of stars forming the Large Magellanic is the standout feature of today’s photo.
The background sky is showing a purplish tint, caused by the presence of what scientists call “airglow” in the Earth’s atmosphere, which human eyes cannot see, sadly. Dark nebulae in the Milky Way show themselves as dimmer patches in the sky near the horizon, as they block the light from stars more distant than these enormous bodies of gas and dust.
I shot two overlapping frames to create this final image, using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II Digital SLR camera fitted with a Sigma 35 mm wide-angle lens. Each photo was taken using the same settings, which were a shutter speed of 8.0 seconds, a lens aperture of f/1.6, and an ISO selection of 6400.
Seen from South Canterbury, New Zealand.
I've missed some truly incredible displays of the southern lights over the past two nights because of thick cloud, wind and rain. But I did manage to catch some subtle colours and faint beams after midnight this morning when the skies had mostly cleared.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 6400
f/3.2
Foreground: 17 x 30 seconds
Sky: 25 x 25 seconds
This is a 42 shot panorama of the Crux & Carina region of the Milky Way above a dry Lake Norring, 2.5 hours south east of Perth in Western Australia.
The Large & Small Magellanic Clouds can be see to the right side of the image.
Our trusty 4x4 'Wreck it Ralph' under the night sky in Botswana. What I missed in certain wildlife spotting was more than made up for with spectacular evening skies.
This shot gives a much better feel for the rooftop camping setup, with the reddish glow coming from the campfire. Sitting around the fire most evenings chatting with our new South African friends was certainly a highlight of the trip.
Thanks for looking!
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Comments and constructive criticism always appreciated.
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The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis and the night sky filled with stars in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
The four new lasers recently installed on the UT4 telescope at Paranal observatory. At the center, three of the four auxiliary telescopes used for interferometry. The Small and Large Magellanic Clouds shine on the sky, next to a portion of the Milky Way.
Canon 6D + Rokinon 24mm f/2, 30 sec, ISO 3200. Cropped mosaic of 5 vertical shots.
Another shot of the Aurora Australis from Boulder Rock in south east Perth, Western Australia. This one is a 4-shot panorama taken a bit earlier. While the aurora isn't as strong, it shows off the pink hues in the sky as well as the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. [Explored 23 May 2024]
In the dark of the country night sky with the Milky Way and stars at Box Head, Killcare, NSW, Australia. Hdr 3 image merge.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 2000
f/1.8
Foreground: 15 x 20 seconds
Sky: 47 x 25 seconds
H-Alpha: 10 x 60 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 62 shot panorama of the Milky Way rising above the Lily Windmill at Stirling Range National Park, 4 hours south east of Perth in Western Australia.
The windmill is a full sized authentic Dutch style flour mill built by Dutch immigrants about 30 years ago. The owner was kind enough to allow me to walk onto his property to photograph the windmill.
The airglow on this particular night was the strongest I have ever seen, really crazy. As usual now, the red areas of the sky are hydrogen alpha regions captured thanks to a screw on filter which isolates the Ha wavelength.
The Stirling Ranges can be seen in the background with some cloud creeping over them from the south.
Update:
Winner Best Nightscape Photo at Perth Astrofest 2024
Nikon d5100
35mm
52 x 13 seconds
ISO 3200
f2.0
Stitched in PTGui
190 megapixel panorama covering approximately 200 degrees of the night sky above Island Point near Mandurah, Western Australia.
Island Point is a small peninsula at Collins Pool, a salt water inlet fed by the nearby Indian Ocean. It gets its name from the small island just offshore that you can see in the middle of this photo. Light pollution is coming from the nearby towns of Harvey and Australind as well as the city of Bunbury about 80km south. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are clearly visible in the sky as well as being reflected on the water's surface. It was dead calm this particular night so the surface of the water acted like a giant mirror. It was a pretty spectacular sight to the naked eye.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 6400
f/2.8
Foreground: 16 x 20 seconds
Sky: 48 x 20 seconds
H-Alpha: 9 x 60 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 73 shot panorama of the summer Milky Way arch above The Pinnalces Desert, 2 hours north of Perth in Western Australia.
This used to be a true Bortle 1 dark sky location but over the years encroaching light pollution by ever expanding towns and nearby mining operations have probably knocked it down a level or two. You can see the light pollution to the right, which is looking south towards Lancelin about 50km away.
This panorama highlights hydrogen alpha emitting regions such as Barnard's Loop around Orion (left side of the image) and the Gum Nebula to the left of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This is thanks to a screw on filter that isolates that part of the spectrum.
Here is another collage I made, this evening. Starting from the Top left is the Northern Pleiades, the top right is the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Middle photo is Orion's Nebula, the bottom left is the Southern Pleiades and the bottom right is the Small Magellanic cloud with the globular cluster called the 47 Tuc. The 47 tuc is the bright object just off to the bottom right of the small Magellanic cloud.
To get a better view, you may need to zoom in a little.
50mm
124 x 6 seconds
ISO 3200
f/2.0
Stitched in MS ICE
Lake Lescehnaultia is a man made reservoir created to supply water for steam trains for half a century from the late 1890's. It's now a recreational and camping area located just outside the Perth metropolitan area.
The light pollution from the city can be seen in the right hand side of the image along with the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds. The lights on the left are from the camping grounds. The image covers approximately 180 degrees of the night sky. Originally coming out of the stitching program at 1.6 gigapixels, it has since been trimmed down to 500 megapixels due to Lightroom's size limitations (get your act together Adobe!!).
As Gandalf would say: "The board is set, the pieces are moving". These are 3 out of the 4 Auxiliary Telescopes at Paranal Observatory. They can be moved along rails in order to arrange them in different configurations. Their light is combined in the interferometric lab, in order to achieve the same spatial resolution of a huge mirror several dozens meters wide.
The Tarantula is one of the southern sky’s great dazzling nebulae. This sprawling complex of star-forming regions is located not in our Milky Way but in our nearby satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The object appears brighter than most nebulae within our galaxy despite its great distance of 160,000 light years in the direction of the constellation Dorado. Several young star clusters can be seen throughout.
In 1987, a supernova lit up one edge of the nebula. At peak brightness, the event reached apparent magnitude 3. Today, the remnant is still closely watched. Its location is marked by the left end of the small red line near the bottom of the image.
This photograph was captured with a 20" f/4.5 remotely controlled telescope at Siding Spring, Australia. Multiple exposures were stacked to produce the final result. The false-colored image was taken through hydrogen-alpha (green), oxygen-III (blue), and Sulfur-II (red) narrow-band filters. Total exposure was three hours.
Nikon d810a
35mm
ISO 2500
f/1.6
22 x 5 seconds
This is a 22 shot panorama of the Milky Way and the Aurora Australis aka the Southern Lights above Stirling Dam near Harvey, 1.5 hours south of Perth in Western Australia. The SAR Arc can be seen almost perfectly in line with the arc of the Milky Way.
There have been so many photos of the recent aurora event but I unfortunately missed out on that one so here's another from the May 11 event.
Nikon d810a
35mm
ISO 1600
f/1.8
Foreground: 10 x 15 seconds
Sky: 33 x 30 seconds
H-Alpha: 10 x 60 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 53 shot panorama of the Milky Way setting over a small, wooded hill on a wheat farm at Jennapullin, 1.5 hours east of Perth in Western Australia.
The light pollution silhouetting the hill is from the nearby Wheatbelt town of Northam. To the left are the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds and on the right is the Cygnus region of the Milky Way, enhanced by a hydrogen alpha filter that isolates that part of the spectrum.
Nikon d810a
35mm
ISO 2000
f/1.8
Foreground: 10 x 30 seconds
Sky: 43 x 30 seconds
iOptron Skytracker
This is a 53 shot panorama of the Milky Way rising above The Pinnacles Desert, 2 hours north of Perth in Western Australia.
It's one of the first panos I have taken with a new Tamron Di USD 35mm lens, reported to be one of the best 35mm prime lenses available. So far it
has proven to do a great job of minimising edge distortion, which is always a plus for astrophotography. At f/1.4 it's also super fast. A bonus is that
the hydrogen alpha filter I bought for my 85mm lens also fits this one which I used to incorporate Ha data into this image. I tried something different with my process on this panorama, stopping down the ISO to minimise noise while compensating by having the aperture almost wide open.
Prominent in this image is the Seagull Nebula on the far right, just above the horizon. Above that is the huge red Gum Nebula and a little to the left is the pink Carina Nebula. Near the centre of the image is the Large Magellanic Cloud while the Small Magellanic Cloud can be seen peaking inbetween the two large pinnacles. To the far left is the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex just above the core. Some dark clouds can be seen just above the horizon which slowly moved their way towards the area throughout the night, completely clouding over the sky by about 3am.
In general, artificial light is not the friend of astronomers and astrophotographers. When it gets in the way of our observing or our photography, we refer to it as “light pollution”, a name that doesn’t have any hint of positivity at all. For this photo, though, I used artificial light in the form of my LED Lenser headlamp/torch to make some inner light seem to beam and burn out from the windows of this little church. Of course, the celestial lights above the church are the reason I was at this spot taking photos, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance to give this old house of worship some inner light to brighten the scene. The two Magellanic Cloud galaxies were too lovely to pass up and I think they add much to this photo.
Although I could have captured this scene with a single image, I used nine shots from a 65-frame panorama that I was creating on the night. I photographed each of those nine images with a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, using a 15-second exposure @ ISO 6400.
Nikon d810a
35mm
ISO 3200
f/2.0
Foreground: 8 x 15 seconds
Sky: 41 x 25 seconds
H-Alpha: 6 x 60 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 55 shot panorama of the summer Milky Way above a grain silo at Kondut, 2.5 hours north east of Perth in Western Australia.
This is the first time I have captured the fourth Southern Hemisphere arch of the Milky Way. Yes, we have four arches! This is the second of the summer arches, the more common one has both the Magellanic Clouds and Orion outside the arch, this has them inside the arch. There's only a small window of opportunity in which to capture it so I settled on a wider 35mm lens rather than my usual 50mm or sometimes 85mm panoramas which can take well over an hour to finish, but this took just 27 minutes. Much like the setting MW, this is taken while looking towards the west, well, more like south west.
These grain silos, aka grain receival points, are all over the Wheatbelt in WA, at almost every town along the rail lines. The only other building in this town was a house that probably belongs to the caretaker of this particular silo.
Most prominent in this image are a number of red hydrogen alpha emitting regions including the Gum Nebula, pretty much at zenith when I captured this pano which is why it looks so huge. Orion can be seen to the right and the Crux & Carina region to the left.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 3200
f/3.2
Foreground: 6 x 15 seconds
Sky: 25 x 30 seconds
H-Alpha: 8 x 60 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 39 shot panorama of the Milky Way rising above a lone tree on a farm at Contine, 1.5 hours south east of Perth in Western Australia.
Prominent in this image are the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds to the right, small satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. Just right of centre at the very top is the pink coloured Carina Nebula while just below that is the dark CoalSack Nebula with Crux (Southern Cross) to its immediate left.
I used an h-alpha filter to highlight the various red coloured hydrogen alpha emitting regions, most prominent in and around the core area on the left.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 6400
f/2.8
Foreground: 26 x 25 seconds
Sky: 72 x 20 seconds
H-Alpha: 9 x 60 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 107 shot panorama of the summer Milky Way arch and Comet G3 (ATLAS) above The Pinnacles Desert, 2 hours north of Perth in Western Australia.
As the comet was rapidly setting, I started with a six image stack of that then proceeded to take the rest of the panorama as I normally do, combining the images later using MS ICE. I had initially planned on using
an 85mm lens but soon realised that it would take far too long and the summer band of the Milky Way would be well past zenith by the time I had finished, which is not ideal for a number of reasons. Still quite happy
with the way this turned out.
Comet G3 is just above the horizon on the far right, its tail was quite huge spanning around 15 degrees. The Southern Hemisphere summer arch is to the left with hydrogen alpha regions highlighted in red, captured using a special filter. Inbetween the arch and comet are the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds.
Nikon d810a
35mm
ISO 2000
f/1.6
Foreground: 10 x 15 seconds
Sky: 32 x 20 seconds
H-Alpha: 6 x 60 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 48 shot panorama of the Milky Way above the Stirling Ranges, 4 hours south east of Perth in Western Australia.
This was taken the same night as my previous posted image of the Lily Windmill, a night where I saw the strongest airglow I have ever witnessed. This is mainly due to the solar maximum we're currenlty experiencing which not only produces more intense aurora events but also more intense airglow.
The red areas in the image are hydrogen alpha emitting regions, from Zeta Ophiuchi on the far left to the Gum Nebula on the far right.
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 4000
f/3.2
Foreground: 14 x 15 seconds
Sky: 35 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 49 shot panorama of the Milky Way rising above a dry, salt encrusted Lake Norring, 2.5 hours south east of Perth in Western Australia.
Prominent in this image are the Magellanic Clouds, just right of centre. Diagonally right is the large, deep red Gum Nebula, captured in detail thanks to a screw on H-alpha filter. To the left of that is the pink Carina Nebula while the Zodiacal Light can be seen, quite brightly, lighting up the core area.