It comes as such a shock sometimes for people to realise that we live on an incredibly active planet. It’s only when extreme weather or a cataclysmic event takes place that we are reminded that we all live on a dynamic planet that’s continually changing and flying through space as we orbit the Sun.

Now there are places in the world where you can go and see these forces of change in a relatively safe environment…. if you take notice of the dangers!!!

One of these places is the incredible active volcano called Mt Yasur that’s on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. To get to Tanna you first have to fly into the main town/city of Villa that’s on the island of Efate and from there you take a one-hour flight to Tanna.

To fully appreciate the beauty and to see the fiery red colour of the lava and the explosive lava bombs you need to go on an evening tour. So it’s best to try and stay overnight or a couple of nights to really enjoy your visit to this magnificent volcano.

We stayed at a beautiful place called ‘White Grass’ that’s right on the water on the western side of the island that is a real island paradise and not that far away from the airport.

To reach the volcano you have to take a two-hour drive in a 4WD on some very rough roads, but the scenery is just so lush and beautiful and you pass many local villages surrounded by very happy children.

As you arrive closer to the eastern side of the island, you come to this amazing lookout where you see this smoking mountain down by the sea that leaves a trail of dark ash mixed with cloud flowing high across the horizon. As you descend down to sea level the road becomes softer and more comfortable to drive on, it’s then that you realise, that in reality, your now driving on compounded volcanic ash and it’s still floating softly down from the sky.

The road up to the volcano is smouldering with gas and smoke coming out of the ground reminding you that we are very much on an active part of the earth’s surface.

After a while of driving through lush green forest to our surprise, you come out to a huge ash field devoid of all plant life where you look up at the volcano, about every 4 minutes it explodes and black plumes of smoke full the air…and we are going to climb up there!!!

The 4WD is able to drive quite a way up the back of the volcano but there’s still quite a steep track you climb to reach the outer rim of the cone…all the time the volcano explodes and the ground shakes…very thrilling indeed!

What your presented with when you get to the top you really have to see to believe, huge plumes of pyroclastic explosions of gas, smoke and molten rock that explode out of the large cone that then falls back into the caldera.

You have to really take note of what your guide tells you because these molten lava bombs may eject toward you so you must at all times respect what they are saying…. your life really does depends on it.

Now this is where it is really better to visit the volcano late in the afternoon toward evening because as the sun sets the colour of the explosive lava bombs go from being a dark black colour to fiery red and as night falls the whole inside of the caldera erupts into an inferno…just an absolutely breath-taking spectacle!!!

Please see below a montage of images that I’ve made up from our visit to the incredible volcano in Vanuatu :-)

I’ve also posted a little story and pictures on spaceweather.com at:
http://spaceweather.com/gallery/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=86533

Earth Waves at Cassini Mosaic
August 21, 2013

The Cassini spacecraft (that’s currently at Saturn) was in a specal alighnment with our planet on the 19th July 2013 and had a wonderful opportunity to take an image of our planet. With it’s wide-angle camera the spacecraft captured a stunning image of Saturn’s rings along with our planet Earth that was 1.5 billion kilometers away in the same photo frame. At this distance our Earth is a mere 1 pixel in diameter in the image…isn’t that amazing to think that all of mankind/ladykind are contained in that 1 little pixel. Full story at NASA

Linda Spilker who is a Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, wanted us earthlings to get involved in this exciting event and ‘Wave at Saturn’ at the same time as the Cassini spacecraft took an image of Earth. Our tiny Earth is too small to see people but as a happy and fun gesture more than 1400 people from all over the world did just that, and then the Cassini team made a wonderful mosaic of the event. These images came from all the dedicated Cassini social media sites like flickr, facebook, and twitter….

I have been involved with the Cassini mission now for 10 years in the role as one of NASA’s Saturn Observation Campaign Members so I set up my models of Saturn and the Cassini spacecraft and waved. At the time that the image was taken Australia was not facing toward Saturn…but that did not stop me from having fun and waving at Saturn too. 

Please see below the stunning image that Cassini took of our tiny world and also the mosaic that the Cassini mission team has assembled of everyone waving that was released on the 21st August 2013… also my picture of waving at Saturn on the day :-))

NASA Releases Images of Earth Taken by Cassini Spacecraft
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsreleases/newsrelease20130722/
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Cassini mission  
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

At last, after so many months of cloudy or foggy new Moon weekends finally some clear starry nights…yeah!!!

Because I’ve not completed my website yet I’ll post a picture of my set-up in the observatory which is located at Leyburn in Queensland, Australia.

Up to two years ago Queensland was experiencing a decade of drought, so astronomy wise we were in seventh heaven, clear skies were nearly always guaranteed every new Moon weekend, but since late 2009 it has not stopped raining. The land is looking green and lush and the bird life has exploded and all the cattle are nice and fat…but when it comes to doing any imaging of the night sky, it’s cloud, cloud and more cloud. And when it’s clear because the grounds so moist a creeping fog arises about 1am every night and washes out all chance of taking any images…mind you, it’s very eerie and spooky being out in the field with all this fog surrounding you and quite a novelty especially when you are from the city….

Back to last weekend, yes the fog did come as usual but not till the early hours of the morning and I managed to get some beautiful shots of the sunrays penetrating through the mist on the field at sunrise…icy cold and very pretty.

Saturday the 3rd August was just a perfect day with a clear blue sky and a promise of a perfect night, and that’s just what it was…a perfect starry night all night long until a little waning crescent Moon rose to bathe its light all over the observing field. The -3 degrees temperature just added to the beauty of the night and the stars shone with a magnificent brilliance that only a dark observing site could reveal.

Please find a couple images below from the weekend, I’m still working on a couple of more images and will post them when I get back from my holidays :-)

A very bright Supernova (SN 2013ej) was discovered on the 25th July in one of the arms of the beautiful spiral galaxy known as M74 in the constellation of Pisces. If you want to image it please be quick, as it will start to fade quite quickly over the coming weeks.

This galaxy is over 30 million light years away and contains about 100 billion stars. On the morning of the 4th August when I took this image, I found it quite unbelievable that you could capture the brilliant light from this explosive event that’s ended in the life of a mighty star…now that’s just amazing!

Image taken at my Stardust Observatory with a Meade ED 80 refractor telescope and a Canon 40D camera with 13x4 minute images stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, cropped and lightly processed in PS CS4…It’s my first Supernova image :-)

I use different equipment for different objects; here is a photo of my usual set-up with a Meade ED80 refractor telescope that’s used to guide the main Meade 10-inch LX200 GPS scope for imaging deep sky objects the Moon and planets. I also use the refractor a lot for wide field deep sky objects and then use the 10-inch as the guide scope. To take even wider field images of the night sky, I then replace the refractor with a camera and appropriate lens onto the top of the telescope and take the images. As I build my web site I’ll explain how I do all of this and what to use for which objects.

Just before dawn on an icy cold Sunday morning the brilliant stars in the constellations of Taurus and Orion looked spectacular spread across the eastern horizon and to add to the pretty picture a little crescent Moon joined them.

Canon 40D camera with Canon 18-55mm lens @ 22mm set at F3.5.
One image at 15-second exposure & ISO 1600.