I travelled out to ‘My Stardust Observatory’ specifically to try and take some images of Comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) in a dark sky and was rewarded with one clear night of observing.
 
The comet was easily seen and positioned near the bright star Dschubba in the head of the constellation of Scorpius and showed a lovely clear tail. The pretty greenish colour is due to emission of diatomic carbon gases and looked just stunning among the countless stars in this part of the starry sky.
 
I wanted to do a wide field image to capture the full beauty of this colourful area of nebulosity around the brilliant star Antares so I used a Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens and Canon 6D Mark 2 camera that was piggybacked on top of my tracking Meade 10inch LX200 telescope.
 
The first image was a wide field taken at 135mm with 25x2 minute images stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4…. The second image was taken at 200mm with 5x4 minute images stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4.
 
The Comet made its closest approach to Earth on the 14th July 2022 and from observations it seems to be still brightening. It will reach its closest point to the Sun at perihelion on December 19th 2022.
 
If you want to keep a live track of the comets journey through the stars please go to The Sky Live at: https://theskylive.com/where-is-c2017k2
 
Happy Comet Hunting, Noeleen :-)

Now is the perfect time to look at and also capture pictures of Jupiter, the planet is so bright rising in the eastern sky an hour after sunset that cannot miss it!
 
Jupiter is at opposition on the 26th September, that means that the planet will rise at the same time as the sun sets and will be in the sky for the whole night, it will also be at best viewing as its at its closest to our Earth.
 
When observing and taking images of the planets the sky conditions have to be so steady, if there is any moisture or jet streams in the air it’s very difficult to obtain good videos for stacking.
 
Sometimes you have to be very patience and just keep watching your computer or camera screen and wait for that few minutes when the seeing goes calm. Or another trick is to wait until the planet is half or three quarters way up the sky or near the zenith where the seeing is usually a bit better.
 
This is my first image of Jupiter for 2022 and I’m quite happy with the result, even though there was a lot of moisture in the sky.
 
My images were taken at ‘My Stardust Observatory’ with a Meade 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC –S planetary CMOS camera.
​AVI videos were captured and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.

The sky was not very steady when I took my first images of Saturn 2022, as there was a lot of moisture in the air.  But I still managed to capture a fair picture that shows the Cassini division ring and some detail on the surface.
 
Better nights will come soon I’m sure when this wet weather passes…. I hope!
 
My images were taken at My Stardust Observatory with a Meade 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC –S planetary CMOS camera.
​AVI videos were captured and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.

We finally have a lovely clear evening sky and the western sky is still ablaze with those stunning colours from those volcanic aerosols high up in the atmosphere from the Hunga-Tonga eruption.
 
About 30 minutes after sunset there is this very eerie bright yellow colour in the sky and then as that fades the sky goes a bright orange colour with a pretty pink and purple hue above. At about 45 minutes after sunset you get to see these gorgeous dark orange colours that are in my photographs, which are very beautiful.
 
Images taken at 6.25pm with a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens, exposure time for first image was 8 seconds & ISO 200, second image was 10 seconds with ISO 400.
 
For the latest observations from NASA’s Earth Observatory please go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere
​

When the Moon was rising last night it looked ever so pretty with its golden colour and the bright planet Jupiter that was only 2 degrees away on the ecliptic.
 
The golden colour is caused by the Moons light having to travel longer through our Earths atmosphere because of aerosols in the sky; once it gets higher the Moon takes on its usually silvery light.
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens @400mm exposure time was 1/30th second with ISO250 and aperture at F11.

Have you ever wanted to learn the night sky?
Join Noeleen from the Southern Astronomical Society to see how easy it is to find the constellations, planets and other beautiful celestial objects in the night sky, even from your own back garden.
 
Please scan the QR code on the poster below to book or go to GC Libraries What’s on at:
https://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/libraries/Whats-on?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D160827310

Noeleen Lowndes is the former president of the Southern Astronomical Society on the Gold Coast and is now a lifetime member. She has actively been involved with astronomy and space education for over 25 years and has supported Gold Coast Libraries with astronomy events since 2003.
 
Noeleen has been a member with NASA’s Saturn Observation Campaign (SOC) for the past 20 years where she educates the public on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn, then shows the real planet through her large telescope to everyone’s delight.

We are camping at the moment at Flanagan Reserve at Rathdowney near the NSW border. Right in front of our camp facing west is Mt Maroon and 50 minutes after sunset what should I see but the lovely waxing crescent Moon with planet Mercury just about to be occulted by a mountain :-)

Rathdowney is about 150 kilometres west of the Gold Coast out in the country so it has very dark skies at night; to my delight those pretty rusty deep orange volcanic aerosols are still showing up in the twilight sky from the Hunga-Tonga eruption.

A young 2 or 3 day old Moon is the perfect time to take a photo of this lunar phenomenon called Earthshine; it’s just the Earths light reflecting back onto the Moon’s surface but it looks pretty awesome!
​
Images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 28-400mm lens; the first image was a 4 second exposure with ISO100. The lunar images were taken with same camera and lens, set on 400mm with 20 images stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.

What was it like at dawn this morning…just breathtaking!
 
The photographs speak for themselves; those volcanic aerosols high up in our atmosphere from the Hunga-Tonga eruption produce these gorgeous colours seen in the sky above where the Sun will be rising.
​ (Sunrise today is at 6.33am)
 
Images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens, exposure times range from 4 seconds to 1/30th second and ISO100.

​At last after a lot of cloudy weather we’ve had a lovely clear evening to see those beautiful deep purple colours produced by volcanic aerosols from the Hunga-Tonga eruption that are still lingering in our twilight skies.
 
It’s predicted from a few scientific sources that observers here in the Southern Hemisphere could see this pretty sky phenomena for many months to come or maybe up to another whole year! Wow…. That’s amazing!
 
As the months go by you see the different constellations setting in the west
​this time it’s Leo (The lion) and part of Hydra (The Water Serpent)
 
Image taken at 6.25pm, an hour and 10 minutes after the Sun has set (sunset was at 5.15pm) with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens at 18mm, the exposure was 13seconds and ISO320.

What a surprise I got when I looked at the Sun late this afternoon and saw this huge prominence putting on an incredible show on the south-western limb of the Sun…what an enormous prominence it was with so much power…. Our star is truly awesome!
 
It’s been reported on Spaceweather.com that it’s a giant wall of scorching hot plasma that’s more than five times taller than our entire planet Earth!
 
Images were taken with a Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached. To sets of images were captured one for the disc and one set for the prominences, stacked in RegiStax6 and combined in PS.
 
Second image is a close up view that’s an overexposed image to capture the gaseous prominence. Image taken with Lunt 60mm solar telescope and Canon 700D camera, with 5x Powermate lens attached.

Wow! Huge Prominence
 
A live movie of this beautiful prominence on the western limb of the Sun, taken with the Canon 700D in Movie mode for 1 minute and forty seconds using a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and 5x Powermate lens attached to the camera.