~ My Stardust Observatory ~

​I’m just blown away by the rich star field in this part of the northern Milky Way in the constellation of Cygnus.
 
If I look out from my observatory at this part of the sky I can honestly say other than the bright stars of Cygnus you cannot see any of this beauty. But aim a camera in that direction and this is what you get…incredible!
 
Please note that here in Australia in the southern hemisphere we see the North America Nebula upside down so I’ve had to turn the image around, we really do live in the land down under :-)
 
My Stardust Observatory is situated in a very dark sky site at 28 degrees south latitude so Cygnus rises and sets very low above the northern horizon and I can only captured it in the months of September & October. To make matters a bit trickier there are tall gum trees and urban light from the city of Toowoomba in that direction.
 
During the new Moon weekends of September and October I concentrated on capturing some of these elusive northern sky objects with the North American Nebula and the Pelican Nebula being the first objects, other objects captured will follow soon…
 
(Information on the North America Nebula taken from page 811:
​Burnham’s Celestial Handbook by Robert Burnham Jr)
 
North America Nebula (NGC 7000) is a vast cloud of mixed nebulosity, dust and stars, named by Dr. Max Wolf, and considered one of the outstanding features of the northern Milky Way. It lies some 3 degrees east of Deneb in the constellation of Cygnus.
 
There main mass of the nebula has a mottled appearance, which in the region of the “Atlantic coast” develops into an amazing pattern of shreds and streamers of nebulosity, both bright and dark.
 
Still farther out in the “Atlantic” this same pattern reappears even more strikingly into the detached nebulous island IC 5047, of tern called the Pelican Nebula’.

To read and discover more about this amazing area of sky please go to an excellent article written by Sue French and published in Sky & Space October 2004 edition.
https://skyandtelescope.org/wp-content/uploads/DSW_Oct2004.pdf​

The sky conditions were not favourable here on the Gold Coast to view the lunar eclipse because of a large band of cloud on the eastern horizon. But to my surprise, not long after sunset I saw a pretty crescent eclipse Moon rising above the houses across our waterway…Yay!...We were going to see something after all : -))
 
I had already set up my Camera on a tripod in the hope the sky would clear (I’m always the eternal optimist) and this time I was rewarded!
 
But my hopes were dashed, when only after 5 minutes the partially eclipsed Moon vanished behind clouds and it stayed that way for at least an hour. By the time the eclipsed Moon was back in the sky it was at it’s full 97% coverage with that telltale orange red hue.
 
The sky conditions were very poor for taking images, but I did manage to capture a couple of pictures through the clouds, we were just so lucky to even have seen it at all : -)
 
This was not a full total eclipse of the Moon, as the Moon did not go fully into the earth’s shadow (Umbra) but it did have all the colours of a lunar eclipse, it was in reality a partial lunar eclipse.

My images were captured with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter attached making a focal length 1280mm and the camera was on an ordinary camera tripod. The lunar eclipse photo had an exposure of 2 seconds and ISO 640, three images were captured and stacked in Registak6 a processed in PS CS4.

The rising eclipsed Moon disappeared behind the clouds at 6.30pm...Oh No :-o

A world map showing where the eclipse is visible at the time of greatest eclipse. Earlier parts of the eclipse are visible farther east, while later times are visible farther west.
​ Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

On November 19, 2021 (late evening of the 18th in some time zones), the Moon passes into the shadow of the Earth, creating a partial lunar eclipse so deep that it can reasonably be called almost total. 
​Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

A very severe thunderstorm hit us yesterday afternoon and went right over the top of our house with thunder and lighting :-0 Within minutes after it had passed I looked out the window to the east and saw this amazing storm cloud formation!
 
It looked like a snaking monster bellowing down from the sky with a large open mouth ready to devour anything in its way, to the left of this astounding looking cloud a rainbow developed and then disappeared within minutes.
 
I’m sure there are many cloud spotters out there that will know what type of cloud this may be, the closest that I can find is from the Cumulonimbus family…whatever type of cloud it was, it was quite astonishing :-)
 
Image taken on the 8th November 2021 with a Canon GX7 Mark 11 camera on manual focus, with an ISO125.

~ InOMN 2021 ~

​What a wonderful weekend it was at this beautiful rainforest retreat that’s situated on top of Green Mountain at Lamington National Park in QLD.
 
On Saturday evening I gave a talk about our Moon in the theatrette and then we headed outside to look through my large telescope at the main attraction for the night, our amazing Moon.
 
After giving a star tour of the night sky to show everyone the constellations in the night sky, everyone then lined up to look into the telescope to view the Moon. I let every person control the telescope with the hand controller to look around the lunar surface, and they were so amazed at the stunning detail on the surface of the Moon…Wow!
 
The sky conditions on the night were just perfect and many guests; staff from O’Reilly’s and family groups from the campground on the mountain came along to enjoy the night.
 
It was such a joy to share this experience with everyone, as this is what NASA’s InOMN is all about, sharing the wonder of the Moon and planets with our community.
 
Thank you to the staff from O’Reilly’s for making my husband and I very welcomed and I’m sure everybody enjoyed there lunar night for NASA’s InOMN.
 
Please find some links below for O’Reilly’s and also for information on the world heritage Lamington National Park; this is one of my favourite places to visit and go bushwalking and stargazing :-)
 
https://oreillys.com.au/
https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/parks/lamington

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre
https://www.nasa.gov/goddard
​

~ Celebrate NASA’s International Observe the Moon Night ~
At O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat
 
Saturday 16th October 2021
 
Be part of this wonderful worldwide NASA lunar event at O’Reilly’s

Saturday 16th October (InOMN)
7.30pm - 8.00pm
Meet in the theatre room for a presentation on our amazing Moon
 
8.00pm – 10.30pm – Telescope Viewing
View the real Moon through a large telescope and see magnificent lunar seas, mountains and craters.
​(Front Lawn –weather permitting)
 
Presented by Noeleen Lowndes
NASA’s Saturn Observation Campaign Member in Australia
 Life Member of the Southern Astronomical Society on the Gold Coast.
https://sas.org.au
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/
​
(Download a Certificate of Participation for everyone who participates)
https://moon.nasa.gov/resources/440/2021-international-observe-the-moon-night-certificate-of-participation/
​

When you really want to take an image you’ll use any method you have,
can you guess how I took this picture?

I’m at our very dark sky site and all my cameras were busy taking deep sky images through the telescope in the observatory. I opened the observatory door and looked up to see Orion and Taurus rising in the eastern sky just before midnight…Wow! 

The only camera I had left to take a photo with was my point & shoot Canon G7x Mark 11, but I also needed a  camera tripod to steady the camera, and that was under the caravan bed where my husband was fast asleep…what to do???

I tried using a fence post in place of a tripod no good, then the rail on the observatory…no good again,
Aha, what about the bonnet of my husbands car, ‘Yay’ success!

With the added bonus that it looks like the stars are reflecting in water…when I showed this image to my husband he laughed and called the picture ‘Stars reflecting on Landcrusier Lake’ 

This is the first time I’ve ever taken a picture of the stars on a cars bonnet!
So the moral of the story is ‘Never Give Up’  :-)

Image taken with Canon G7x mark 11 camera on the manual setting with a 15 second exposure, ISO2000, aperture F2 and focal length 8.8mm.

More images taken at my observatory in October coming soon….

The Sun has been very active lately with many sunspots showing up on its surface but today for the first time in a long time its solar surface spotless, so I just had to take a picture :-)
 
Image taken with my Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter attached making a focal length of 1280mm.  Twenty images were captured with an exposure of 1/500th second and ISO100, images were stacked in RegiStak6 and processed in PS CS4.
​

Movie taken with Canon 70D camera on movie mode (I said 15th instead of 16th of September…Oops)

The Sun has these incredibly active sunspot groups on its surface numbered AR2866 & AR2868 with another sunspot developing not far away numbered AR2869.
The two smaller sunspots nearing the western limb are AR2863 & AR2865.
 
I’m at my Stardust Observatory this weekend and just had to take some images of these wonderful active regions on the solar surface  :-)

My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter attached…. The exposure was 1/500th second and ISO100, 20 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PSCS4.

Movie taken with my Canon 70D and Canon 100-400mm lens plus 2x teleconverter = Focal length 1280mm

I was out at my Stardust Observatory and even though it was a lovely clear sky all around me, when I went to take a photo of the setting Sun, there was this huge smoky band on the western horizon from a large bushfire. Within minutes the Sun was setting into the thick fiery atmosphere and being pulled into an egg shape!
 
I had to quickly take the solar filter off the lens to capture the Sun as it was disappearing into the thick smog; it went this amazing bright pink colour before it completely disappeared…it was very exciting. You can also just make out those two large sunspot groups AR2866 & AR2868 on the surface.

My images were taken on my last new moon weekend, with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter taken off the lens, the thick smoke acted as filter.
(This is the real hot pink colour of the Sun with no processing)

On the evening of the 10th September the 3 day old waxing crescent Moon came to within 4 degrees of Venus low in the western sky. With this phase of the Moon you can also see that wonderful celestial phenomenon called earthshine displayed on the lunar surface.
 
Earthshine is now well understood as sunlight from Earth’s clouds being reflected back onto the lunar surface producing this beautiful soft glow on the Moons unlit surface.
 
I post a lot of my images onto Dr Tony Phillips website called Spaceweather.com
​Dr Phillips has written an article call ‘What is the Da Vinci Glow?’ It’s a very interesting read, please go to the link below and see how Leonardo Da Vinci over 500 years ago worked out what earthshine really was :-)
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/05/16/what-is-the-da-vinci-glow/
 
I found this really nice YouTube video by Dr John Mason from the Southern Downs Planetarium & Science Centre. Where he takes you outside into the garden to look at the Earthshine on the Moon and view the De Vinci Glow. His view on this night was very similar to what I have captured here with my image.

In this video Dr John Mason talks about the magnificent conjunction of the crescent moon and the brilliant planet Venus.