​~ Totality was from 8.16pm to 9.42pm ~
 
I’ve made up a photomontage of the lunar images that I took of the Total Eclipse of Moon on the evening of the 8th November 2022.
 
It was very cloudy to begin with so missed some of the beginning, the first image taken was when the Moon went into the Umbral at 7.11pm, this had to be a very quick shot as cloud came over the sky a few minutes after.
 
The next time it had cleared, was half way through the eclipse at 7.46pm. It looked like we were not going to see totality but by magic the sky started to clear and there was the eclipsed Moon in all its glory among the faint stars of Aries (The Ram).
 
It looked ever so pretty and the colour was just gorgeous, because I only had my camera and lens on a tripod I could only take a couple of shots at a time as the movement of the heavens is quite noticeable at high magnification.
 
I used a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter making a focal length of 1280mm. Because the eclipse was quite bright I only had to use a 1 second exposure with ISO 2000 to capture a pretty picture.
 
Please see below the single image with all the setting times that I used, it was so lucky that the sky cleared in time to see this beautiful wonder of the night sky :-)

1st image taken at 7.11pm (AEST) Umbral Eclipse has begun.
​Five images captured with exposure time of 1/250th second and ISO 160, stacked in RegiStax6.

2nd Image taken midway into eclipse at 7.46pm with exposure time of 1/250th second and ISO 200.
Five images captured and stacked in RegiStax6.

3rd Image taken at Totality at 9.06pm with planet Uranus only 1.5 degrees away, exposure time of 1 second and ISO 2000, five images were captured and stacked in RegiStax6, processed in PS CS4.

4th images taken at 10pm with the Moon moving out of the Earths shadow and sunlight returning on NW limb at 10pm with exposure time of 2 seconds and ISO 500.
​You can still see the gorgeous orange red colour on the surface with this longer exposure.

 5th Image was taken at 10.07 pm that showed a lot of the Moon still in the Earths shadow, with exposure time of 1/30th second and ISO 400.
 
At 10.10pm cloud came over the whole sky and that was the end of seeing more of the Eclipse
​that ended at 11.58pm.

~ Lunar Eclipse with Uranus on the ecliptic ~

​​We had very cloudy skies right up to the time of totality and then the sky cleared for a stunning view of the Total Eclipse of the Moon; this was a particularly pretty eclipse because of the field of stars surrounding the deep red Moon with the bluish planet Uranus only 1.5 degrees away.
 
Images were taken with just a Canon 70D camera and Tamron18-400mm lens and 2x teleconverter, making a focal length of 1280mm on a static camera tripod.

Five images were captured with 1-second exposures, ISO 2000 and stacked in Registax6 processed in PS.

The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan). The beautiful structure of entwined gas and dust are the remnants from an exploding star that occurred approximately 8000 -10,000 years ago in massive supernova!
 
“It is believed that this star was 20 times more massive than our Sun, since that time it has expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, and 36 times the area, of the full moon)” (Referenced from planetarium app Stellarium).
 
This large nebula is very tenuous in nature and has a very low surface area so you really need quite a dark sky to capture it. At my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn it does not get very high in the northern sky only about 30 degrees. It’s also only seen for a few months from August to October so it’s not an easy object to capture.
 
I’ve taken a closer look at the Veil Nebula with its many parts, the Eastern Veil also know as NGC 6992 or Caldwell 34 and NGC 6995 is quite colourful with very intricate structures.  The Western Veil is known as NGC 6960 or the Witch’s broom, has this pretty bright star embedded into it only known as 52 Cygni.
 
There is another interesting feature called Pickering’s Triangle that I’ve also managed to capture in the middle of the nebula.
 
To capture this image I used a Canon 6D Mark 11 camera with a 70-200mm lens attached to a tracking telescope in the observatory. I wanted to capture a wider field of this area and really liked having that large open star cluster NGC 6940 in the constellation of Vulpecula in the filed of view.

​ I’ve also cropped in to concentrate of the large faint nebula itself with the Eastern and Western sections included.
 
There were 20 x 3 minutes images with corresponding dark frames captured, with ISO 3200.
​Images were stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop.

The Hubble Space Telescope has recently taken another look at this amazing nebula, please go to: 
​Hubble Revisits the Veil Nebula - Apr 2, 2021 -
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-revisits-the-veil-nebula
 
Hubble’s Caldwell Catalog – Caldwell 34 – Dec 18, 2019 -
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/caldwell-34
 
~ The International Astronomical Unions Constellations (IAU) star charts at:
https://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations/

~ ‘Starry Starry Night’ How to learn the night sky ~
18th August 2022 at 1pm
 
This is the first adult presentation that I’ve been able to do since Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted and it was for Science Week 2022.
 
It was so lovely to spend time again with many very interested members of the public to show them how to learn the night sky from there own back garden.
 
I also touched on how they could also begin to take some photographs of the night sky and other helpful information to start their journey of discovery into our starry starry night J
 
Another resource is the Astrolink page on my website will help greatly in finding Star Charts at: http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-links.html
 
*** Happy Stargazing *** Noeleen :-D

​The full Moon looked stunning rising this evening just after sunset with a soft golden glow here on the Gold Coast.
 
The full Moon in September is know in the old farmers almanac as a Harvest Moon as this month coincided with the annual crop harvest in the Northern Hemisphere.
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 200mm on a tripod, the exposure time was 1/50th second and ISO200.
 

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 :-)

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.