Over the last couple of days we have had these incredible thunderstorms hit south east Queensland and experienced spectacular displays of lightning that blaze all over the sky accompanied by deafening cracks and booms of thunder…its all been so exciting to watch every evening :-)
 
The image above was taken on the 13th February with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens set at 19mm on a tripod with a cable release. I just set the images to 5 second exposures and do continues shooting as there’s no way I could catch them any other way.  (ISO100)
 
The second image below was taken on the 11th February with the same camera and lens also set at 19mm, but the exposure was only 0.3 second as there was so much light in the sky from the lightning…it was awesome!

~ International day of women and girls in science celebration ~
​
STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics)
 
On Saturday the 10th February I was invited to be part of the Gold Coast City Libraries launch of Girls who STEAM at the Robina Library (Auditorium).
 
This was a dedicated program of workshops just for girls, with exclusive activities across the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics to inspire and unite girls aged 8 years and over in their passion for science. 
 
I was part of the hands on activities, provoking ideas, and pop-up science to excite the Girls in Science with over two hundred people coming along on the day.
 
A couple of top female scientists from Griffith University also came along to the event to inspire the girls with there talks and my astronomy and NASA space displays were very popular.
I really enjoyed the day and had a lot of fun with all the girls :-)
 
Explore STEAM programs:
http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/library/steam-programs-11684.html

Sunspot AR2699 on the 9th February 2018
 
GROWING SUNSPOT: Sunspot AR2699 continues to grow, more than doubling in size since it appeared on Feb. 4th. This image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the sunspot as compared with the size of the Earth:
 
The sunspot has developed an unstable "beta-gamma" magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares.
​NOAA forecasters estimate a 15% chance of such explosions on Feb. 9th. Free: Solar Flare Alerts.
 
With two primary dark cores larger than Earth and a scattering of moon-sized magnetic condensations stretching more than 100,000 km across the surface of the sun, AR2699 is an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. 

Story Credit: http://www.spaceweather.com
Image Credit: SDO solar observatory at: https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov

My Image below was taken with a 127mm refractor telescope using a Canon 700D camera fitted and a 2x Barlow lens, a glass solar filter was attached to the front of the telescope lens for safe viewing and imaging of the Sun.
I also use a HEQ5 Pro mount for tracking.

Sunspots…Yay!
 
After so much time with a blank solar surface it’s exciting to see some detail on the Suns surface with this large active sunspot group :-)
 
My images were taken with a 127mm refractor telescope and a Canon 700D camera and a 2x barlow lens attached. A glass solar filter was fitted to the telescope lens for safe viewing and imaging of the Sun, 12 images were taken which were stacked in RegiStax6, the exposure times were 1/400th second and ISO400. 

It was a real disappointment that the east coast of Australia missed out on viewing the total eclipse of the Moon because of heavy rain, but late yesterday afternoon a beautiful rainbow was briefly on show with its reflection in the water to lighten my spirits :-)
 
Image was taken on the 3rd February 2018 at home with a Canon G15 camera set on manual focus and auto exposure.