A beautiful solar halo appeared high up in our summertime sky, at this time of the year it’s very hot here in Queensland, with huge thunderstorms rolling in nearly every afternoon so I was very lucky to capture this lovely halo before the rain started to fall…

These halos are quite special as they are made up of millions of tiny ice crystals in the high cirrus cloud that reflect and refract the Suns light to produce an amazing 22-degree ring around the Sun…now that’s quite awesome!
Another amazing thing about this phenomenon is that they are so personal, just like a rainbow; everybody see them differently because of their angle of view or the different size of the ice crystals from where they are standing.

If you would like to know more about how these solar halo’s form then please go to Les Cowley’s excellent website called Atmospheric Optics at: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circ2.htm

If you want to be blown away by the beauty and science of atmospheric optics then go to the main website at: http://www.atoptics.co.uk

Have a Happy New Year everyone :-)
​
My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 10-20mm lens set at 10mm, the exposure was 1/800th second and ISO100.

Twas the day before Christmas and the Sun has a sprinkling of tiny sunspots on its surface that are quite faint,
I'm keeping an eye on them…
 
Merry Christmas everyone :-)
 
Image was taken with a Canon 70D camera with a Tamron 18-400mm lens and a 2x converter attached. The exposure time was 1/500th second and ISO200, a glass solar filter was fitted to the front of the lens for safe imaging of the Sun.

I battled with cloud all night to try and capture some Geminid meteors from midnight until 4am, but at 3.30am on the 15th December this stunning meteor streaked in under the cloud from the north east and blazed across the sky…Wow!
 
I am pretty sure this meteor is completely unrelated to the Geminids meteor shower as it is pointing towards and not radiating away from Gemini (but I may be wrong perhaps it is a Geminid) the constellation above the meteor is Leo, The Lion (We see it upside down here in Australia)
 
So this pretty meteor may have photo-bombed the Gemini meteor shower and rewarded me with
​a beautiful picture after all :-)
 
Photo taken with a Canon 700D camera and a Canon 18-55mm lens, ISO 1600 and exposure was 14 seconds. I have cropped the image just to show the meteor with its pretty colours as it came through the atmosphere.

Here in Australia the constellation of Gemini is well and truly up by 1.15am so I braved the mosquitoes and all the festive Christmas lights on display to try and catch a few of them here at home.
 
After 3 hours all I caught was one, but one is better than none, maybe tomorrow morning I may have better luck…that is, if the weather holds out!
 
I also got a photo of the waning crescent Moon with Mars and Jupiter in the eastern sky before dawn with the puffy clouds being reflected in the water…
The view was very serene, so I think all the pretty lights added to my picture after all :-)
 
Images were taken with a Canon 700D camera and an 18-55mm lens; the exposure for the meteor image was 15 second, ISO1600. The wide field image was also a 15 second exposure and ISO 200, lens set at 18mm.
 
Information on Spaceweather.com on the Geminid Meteor Shower
http://www.spaceweather.com
 
Geminid Meteors 
THE GEMINID METEOR SHOWER: Right now, Earth is passing through a stream of gravelly debris from "rock comet" 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower. Sky watchers far from city lights could see dozens of meteors per hour. The best time to look, no matter where you live, is during the dark hours before sunrise on Thursday, Dec. 14th, when the constellation Gemini is high overhead. [sky map]

I only just managed to capture a quick image of the Sun today before the rain clouds rolled in again, the solar surface is still completely spotless…
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 400mm with a 2x converter making a focal length of 1280mm. This is just a single image, with an exposure time of 1/500th second and ISO200.