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08 May 2018. Thanks for the inspiration 🙏 I dedicate today’s photo to my fellow Australian nightscape photographer, Richard Tatti @nightscapeimages. Richard’s photographic talents came to my attention through one of the Facebook groups we’re members of, Nightscape Photographers Australia. Living in different Australian states, we’ve not met in person but have talked on the phone a couple of times as well as had several chats on Facebook. 🚜 Richard lives in an area of Australia that seems to have more than its fair share of derelict, abandoned and very photogenic farm equipment and vehicles, which he uses in many of his nightscape images. Until March of this year I’d failed to find any similar relics during my rural road trips, but while driving in the daytime near Nowra, New South Wales, I spotted this abandoned cart under a tree, about 50 metres from the highway. I quickly saved the GPS location, and on Sunday night of this week made my way there after shooting at another spot about 20km away. 🌌🌓 Being near a highway the tree was lit up by passing traffic, and I got in close to light the cart with my LED lamp. You can see thick fog in the background in front of the mountain near where Mars had just risen. The moon was peeking above the eastern horizon, giving the white glow that is silhouetting the mountain. The Milky Way was its usual beautiful glowing band of light and colour in the Aussie night sky. 📷 This single-frame image was shot with a Canon EOS 6D Mk II, Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/2.8, 20 second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Jaspers Brush, New South Wales, Australia)

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07 May 2018. A fine, upstanding galaxy Australia 🇦🇺 🐄 🌌 I love creating these vertical panoramic images of the Milky Way standing tall over the Australian landscape. Sadly, Instagram has a limit on how tall images can be, so I have to frame them to fit using an app like Squaready. 🌌 This is a vertical panorama that was created from 25 overlapping images. Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 15 sec @ ISO 3200. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Jamberoo, New South Wales)

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Triple treat! Getting up at 5:30 this morning (May 2nd) for a walk at Cronulla was a triple treat: 1. I got to be with one of my kids 2. I got to exercise 3. This sunrise was insane! It’s common to see photos online where the colours have been boosted (increased saturation), but this photo has had its colours desaturated slightly because the actual scene was a touch too intense. Thanks for walking with me @ladyofthesunshine_ #Cronulla #Ilovecronulla #theshire #sutherlandshire #beach #sunrise #ocean #colours #colors #sydney #australia #coast #nature #beauty @ilovecronulla @visittheshire (at North Cronulla surf club)

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30 Apr 2018. Looking up from Down Under 😉 Here in Australia (and New Zealand and the countries of South America and Southern Africa, plus many islands in the South Pacific), we are are lucky to have the Milky Way’s central band and galactic core pass high in the sky during our autumn and winter months. These marvels being up high means there’s less atmosphere between them and the observer than when things are viewed lower down, resulting in sharper views through cameras and telescopes. Observing the night sky in the colder months of the year also means more stable atmospheric conditions, which add further to the quality of the seeing. 🌌 If you can find somewhere dark, safe and not wet with dew you can lay back and look up as this show takes place above. Pointing your camera straight up lets you photograph the scene, as I’ve done here. Poplar trees flanked the rural back-road that I was looking up from. After a bit of shuffling around, and several test shots, I came up with this composition that includes the trees and the Milky Way. To me, the trees seem to be reaching up like hands, in an almost worshipful manner, heralding the majesty and immensity of the universe and all it contains. What do you see? 📷 This photo is a single frame, shot with Canon EOS 6D Mark II, Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/2.8, using a 20-second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams

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29 Apr 2018. Moos that make milk, under the Milky Way. 🐄 OK, these four-legged farm animals aren't called “moos”, they’re cows, but try to go with it, please. The photo doesn’t convey the aroma that was in the air next to this field of cows, nor does it pass on to you the sounds that I was subject to as the cows did things to add to that aroma. Hopefully, though, it does bring you the serenity and peace that some, like me, find in rural settings like this one near Kiama, Australia. Whether it be during the day or at night; in clear skies or cloudy; and while walking, cycling or driving, places like this soothe my soul. That being said, give me a moonless night under a cloudless sky and you’ll find me one very contended person! 🌌 The bright, white “star” at the top-left corner of this photo isn’t a star at all, but the giant planet Jupiter. Down at the bottom of the scene, up and a little to the right of the pole in the centre, our solar system’s second-largest planet, Saturn, is also making its presence known. 📷 I shot this photo with a Canon EOS 6D Mark II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens set to an aperture of f/2.4, for an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Jamberoo, New South Wales)

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28 Apr 2018. Massive! 😱 The Milky Way is big. Very big. In fact, it’s massive! To try to convey some of that vastness to you I chose a “standard” focal-length lens to take this photo of the Milky Way’s core rising over the Tasman Sea, on Australia’s east coast. Lots of nightscape photos are captured with wide-angle lenses, which have focal-lengths of 14mm, 24mm and the like. For something different, though, I like to shoot with longer lenses from time to time, especially when this is the result. 🌌 It’s a photo that, in all humility, made me say “wow” out loud when I looked at it on my camera’s preview screen. Seeing the number of stars that the camera captured light from, as well as the gigantic dust lanes and dark gas clouds that block out light from just as many stars again, it was hard not to be amazed at the sight of it seemingly rising from the ocean. Creation is full of innumerable wonders like this, and it’s a huge privilege to be able to photograph a few of them. 📷 This single-frame image was taken with a Canon EOS 6D camera, through a Canon 50mm STM lens @ f/2.8, using an 8-second exposure @ ISO 12800. Noise and star reduction were carried out using the Photoshop action-packs “EasyNR” and “MiniSTARS”, both available from @photographingspace • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Seven Mile Beach Reserve)

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27 Apr 2018. Rising lights in the early hours 🌌📽 To get around the limits of Instagram’s image sizing I have turned this four-image vertical panoramic photo into a video. Make sure to watch through until the end to see the full photo and some pointers to the three planets that are featured in the photo. Jupiter, Saturn & Mars were lined up in the eastern sky when I captured this scene. The location is Jerrara, a dairy farming area on the southeast coast of Australia and a little over an hour’s drive from my home in the southern suburbs of Sydney. 🌌 The vertical panorama was created from four overlapping images, each shot with a Canon EOS 6D Mark II camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, for an exposure time of 13-seconds @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Jerrara)

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24 Apr 2018. Aussie aperture 📖 “Aperture: an opening, hole, or gap; a space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light passes through a camera”. For this photo, I chose the "aperture" in the canopy of Australian eucalypt trees to let through the light of the Milky Way, so that the open "aperture" of my camera could record that light for you to see. 🌌 As well as the central band and core region of the Milky Way, this photo captured the light from three planets. Jupiter can be seen peeking out from the leaves at the top-left of the shot. Saturn is on the left side of the “v” shape in the trees at the bottom, and Mars, which is hidden by the trees below that “v”, but which managed to shine its light through the smallest of gaps there. An irony of this shot is that it I took it at a location that’s about a 20-minute drive from my home, towards the very end of a four-hour road trip to find clear and dark skies. 📷 Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at National Falls)

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23 Apr 2018. One broken, one dead 🤷🏼‍♂️ I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been driving and seen, out of the corner of an eye, something that’s grabbed hold of me and almost begged to be featured in a photograph. Back in 2003 when I visited Western Michigan in winter, I was continually noticing things to include in photos, in particular, a cemetery that was blanketed by snow. My friend Clare, who was hosting my visit, asked “why do you want to take photos of a cemetery? You have cemeteries back home in Australia, don’t ya?”. My reply to him was “yeah, but ours aren’t covered in snow”. 🌌 🌲 Glimpsing these two trees–one alive but broken, and the other long-dead–as I drove down this country road on Sunday night, I knew I had to turn back and include them in a photograph with the rising core of the Milky Way. It was only just in time, though, as the clouds that are fringing the top of the shot covered the whole eastern sky in mere minutes after I snapped off the last of five frames for the night. Out-of-shot and to the left there was a bright orange street light, marking the nearby rural junction that is often shrouded in fog at this time of year. It took a lot of work in Lightroom to remove that horrible yellow stain from the photo. 🌌 A single-frame photo, shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo # (at Toolijooa)

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22 Apr 2018. Glitter & green Another shot of the glittering Milky Way hanging in the sky over the green hills of Jamberoo, Australia. (at Jamberoo, New South Wales)

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21 Apr 2018. Not bad, but not what I wanted 😰 According to what I’ve read online today, last night (Friday 20th April), the Aurora Australis put on a show that was exceptional, and which one photographer described as the “best Aurora for three years”. While it was happening I was 1) too far north to see it and 2) underneath clouds. 🌌 After the clouds cleared, I did manage to head out for a drive of about 100km (60mi) to the dairy region area around Kiama, on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. It was nearly 1:00 am when I arrived, meaning that the Milky Way’s core was well above the horizon and getting to a height that makes it difficult to work into an interesting foreground. After lots of experimenting with lenses, locations and lighting I created this shot by using some trees and a lovely grassy hill to frame the core region of our home galaxy. The yellowed glow behind the horizon is from the lights of Kiama itself, about five kilometres to the east. Despite the late hour and how dark the scene looked to my eyes, the foreground of the photo was well lit up by the spill of light pollution from the city of Wollongong, 28km to the northeast. 📷 This single-frame photo was shot with a Canon EOS 6D MkII camera, a Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/2.4, using a 25- second exposure and an ISO of 3200. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #kiama #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Jamberoo, New South Wales)

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16 Apr 2018. Look out, here comes the Cloud Magnet! ☁️💨 It might be time for me to change my Instagram name, website, Twitter handle and Facebook presence to @CloudMagnet. Well, that’s how my last few nightscape photography outings have left me feeling. Last night (Sunday 15th) I headed south from Sydney under a cloudless sky, towards what looked like a destination that was also under a cloudless sky, to be greeted by a cloudy sky about 40km from home. Gauging the direction that the clouds were coming from and looking at where they weren’t, I turned back towards the Royal National Park and a spot I had spent a lot of time at a couple of years back. 😰🤷🏼‍♂️ While driving to this place, though, I had failed to notice in the rear-view mirror that my magic cloud-attracting powers were drawing the something along after me. Despite the sky ahead of me being clear all the way, upon arriving and getting out of my car and letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, I saw that my fluffy floating nemesis was right above me. This shot of the Milky Way, Saturn and Mars rising beyond the entrance gates to the Garie Beach access road, is all I ended up with for the night. 📷 A single frame photo, shot with my trusty setup of Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 3200. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Royal National Park)

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15 Apr 2018. Almost the same, but different 😲 When I looked at my Instagram profile tonight, it struck me that lots of my recent picture thumbnails look the same: the Milky Way stretches from the lower left corner and across to the top-right of the scene. That’s the way things roll–or more accurately, rise–at this time of year in the southern hemisphere. Depending on one’s latitude, the Milky Way’s core clears the horizon somewhere between Northeast and Southeast, then climbs towards the zenith through the night. 🌌 🐄 Today’s post is just like those, but was shot at a different place to any of the others that I’ve posted this year, the locality of Toolijooa. Some of Australia’s best dairy country can be found in Toolijooa and surrounds, and the countryside makes for a quiet and peaceful location for setting up to photograph the night sky. The clouds that had prevented me from shooting elsewhere on this night had cleared enough here to let me get a few photos. As you can see from this one, there was lots of green atmospheric airglow in the sky on this night. 📷 Canon EOS 6D MkII, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #airglow #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams @igersillawarra (at Toolijooa)

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13 Apr 2018. (Almost) driven to despair 🌞☁️ My part of Australia is having an unusually warm Autumn this year. The temperature has been around 35c for the past two days, whereas the average temperature for the month is usually around 23c. We’ve had a run of sunny days and clear nights as well, and last night was the first time in nearly two weeks that I could get out for some photography. A forecast of consecutive cloudless sunny days implied cloudless nights in between, but after driving 110km to get away from the lights of two big cities (Sydney and Wollongong), I arrived at Gerroa Beach only to get out of the car and find the sky half-covered in clouds. I waited for about half an hour before moving to a couple of other spots, where the sky was less cloudy but still not totally clear. 🌌 This photo of the Milky Way’s core rising, flanked by clouds on the right, was taken at one of those locations, on the road to a lovely Australian country town, Jamberoo. Apart from one passing car in a 45 minute period I had the road to myself, and was able place my tripod and camera in the centre of the road for several shots like this one. About three kilometres to the east, beyond the hill in the photo, the town of Kiama (population 22,000) was sending wasted light up to the sky, creating the white glow at the end of the road. Sodium fog lamps on the highway to the west of Kiama gave the clouds their slightly pink hue, as captured by the camera. 📷 My single-frame photo was shot with a Canon EOS 6D MkII camera, fitted with a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, for a 6-second exposure at ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Jerrara)

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10 Apr 2018. Gerroa’s Galactic Goodies 🎊 My mid-March visit to Gerroa, a coastal town about 100km (60mi) south of my home in Sydney, Australia, was my first proper outing to shoot the Milky Way’s galactic core for 2018. During the hours I was at this beach location I shot two time-lapses, a couple of panoramas and almost 100 single-frame shots. All up I came home with 1086 images! 🌟🌌🌙 This time-lapse video has captured the bright and white planet Jupiter, plus the Milky Way, Mars and Saturn as they rose over the Tasman Sea. The rising orb of orange illumination at the end of the piece isn’t the Sun but the Moon. In the last frame or two, you can see a pair of satellites catching the sun’s light as they moved towards the eastern horizon. The video isn’t as sharp as I had hoped due to my ageing eyesight letting me down when I was setting up for the sequence. 📷 The video is made up from 371 single frames, that were captured over a two-hour period, using a Canon EOS 6D MkII, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.8, with each frame exposed for 15 seconds @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams (at Seven Mile Beach State Park)

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09 Apr, 2018. A shining sea of stars 🚢 🌊 Way out to sea and just over the horizon a cargo ship moves down the coast, its lights seeming to answer the fluorescent spill from a street light near the photographer’s position. The endless thud of waves crashing over the rocks beats a slow rhythm to mark time for the stars of the Milky Way as they make their nightly crawl across the roof of the sky. 🌌 In my late childhood and early teen years, I spent lots of hours clambering over these rocks with my siblings, looking for shells, driftwood & unusual pebbles during holiday times. The location is Tuross Head, on the southeast coast of my state of New South Wales, Australia. My children, now in their twenties, have also enjoyed many holidays at this place of peace and relaxation. None of them nor my wife have ever joined me on an outing to see and photograph the wonders of the night sky, either here or anywhere else. They’re missing out on so much! 📷 This image is a single-frame photograph, captured with a Canon EOS 6D MkII camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, with a 13-second exposure @ ISO 6400. • • • • • @astro_photography_ @space @universe247 #astro_photography_ #astronomy #astrophotography #darkskyshots #elitelongexposures #fantastic_universe #globalpixels #ig_astrophotography #ig_shutterworld #night_shooterz #nightimages #nightphotography #nightscape #nightscapeoz #nightscaper #nightshooters #stargazing #startalkradio #timelessuniverse #universe #universetoday #WeOwnTheNight_IG #night_excl #StargazingABC #super_longexpo #milkyway #galaxy #WOTN_MilkyWay #MilkyWayChasers #MilkyWayGrams @eurobodalla (at Tuross Head, New South Wales)

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08 Apr, 2018. Radiation central 📡💡🌟 The Milky Way is continually generating radiation in all directions, in the form of light; X-rays; infrared, ultraviolet; gamma rays & radio. When radiation at the wavelengths of visible light collides with the sensor in a digital camera, you get photos like this one, taken at the Telstra telecommunications station at Maddens Plains in New South Wales, Australia. The microwave dishes mounted on the tower are sending and receiving radio signals that carry voice and data communications traffic along the east coast of Australia. I thought it fitting to have these earthly and heavenly radiation generators in the same shot. Something I remember distinctly about capturing this image was that I had to lay on my back underneath the camera and tripod so that I could line up the shot and make sure the focus was sharp. I think it was worth the discomfort. 📷 This photo was created from two nearly-identical images that were combined to reduce the amount of digital noise present in them, using a process known as “stacking”. Each photo was taken with equipment and settings as follows: Canon EOS 6D camera, a Canon 40mm STM lens @ f/3.2, an exposure time of 6 seconds @ ISO 6400. (at Maddens Plains)