A severe thunderstorm hit the Gold Coast in Queensland on the afternoon of the 21st January and in only 35 minutes it went from a beautiful clear blue sky to a very threatening thunderstorm with high winds and torrential rainfall.
 
At 4.15pm I went outside and looked up and saw this strange cloud front racing in from the southern sky and within minutes it was right overhead. As I looked to the front of the cloud I could see this beautiful cloud shadow produced from the Sun being behind the clouds. When the cloud passed right above me I also saw these strange very dark wispy streaks fanning out from underneath the cloud system. (Not sure what was happening here)
 
Thunder was now being heard and the whole sky looked very dark and quite menacing indeed. I raced out to the front of my house, which faces east and to the water, and as you can see from my image above the whole sky was just so dark and threatening, everything outside was in a monotone colour…very eerie, then the thunderstorm hit with all its awesome power!
 
These types of severe thunderstorm clouds are called cumulonimbus and carry the most dangerous weather with them including very strong winds, large hail and torrential rain.

Please see a slideshow below of what happened in our sky in only just 35 minutes!

Australia is a very harsh country; over the last six months we’ve had one of the most severe droughts, with terrible bush fires, now flooding rains have started to arrive to give new life to our country.
 
Australian Bureau of Meteorology: What is a severe thunderstorm?

I’m always looking for atmospheric phenomena in the sky, but while away in our caravan over the holidays I was washing up the dishes and to my amazement saw this colourful corona in one of the glasses.
 
We have all seen coloured soap suds from an incoming light source but this is the first time I have ever seen this light so uniformed and concentric. There is a lot of science here just in this glass of soapsuds, just like when a corona is seen around the Sun or Moon it has to do with the Suns light.
 
But in this case the light from the sun is not being refracted through ice crystals,
​but interacting with the thin layer of soap film and producing this amazing effect right here in a glass.
I wonder what you will see next time you wash up the dishes :-)
 
The image was taken on the 18th January at Lennox Head in NSW with a Canon GX7 Mark11 camera, exposure 1/160th second and ISO 125.

I just love it when a large cumulus cloud covers the Sun and the Suns light filters through the gaps in the clouds and produces these awesome looking sunrays.
 
The best time to see them is when the sun is rising or setting in the sky, this one was taken at 5.20pm in the afternoon, so have a look next time the Sun is setting to see if you can see this very pretty phenomenon…and don’t forget to take a picture :-)
 
The image was taken with a Canon GX7 Mark ll camera with the lens set at 24mm (wide field) exposure time was 1/320th second and ISO200.
Please Note: It’s important to set the lens to the manual setting at (infinity)
​because these point and shoot cameras will not be able to auto focus on clouds.
 
To find out more on how these sunrays are produced please got to the link below:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk/atoptics/ray1.htm
This is an excellent website created by Les Cowley that has an enormous amount of different atmospheric objects that you can seen in the sky:
Atmospheric Optics:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk
 
~ Keep Looking Up ~
Because you’ll never know what you’ll find up there in our amazing sky :-)

I decided to set my other telescope up in all this heat today to see if that new sunspot could be seen developing on the surface of the Sun, it was very very faint but YES…there is was, I got it :-)
 
There was a lot of heat haze and high thin cloud in the sky so I was extremely lucky to even capture the sunspot, it’s not been designated any number yet but I’m sure it won’t be long.
 
To find out more about this new solar cycle just keep checking the Spaceweather.com website at: https://www.spaceweather.com
 
The images were taken with a 127mm refractor at prime focus that was fitted with a solar filter. I used a Canon 700D camera to take the pictures, exposures times were 1/500th second and ISO 200. Twelve images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

This is my telescope set-up that I used to take a picture of the Sun on the 9th January 2020. I used a 127mm (5inch) refractor with an Orion glass solar filter attached to the front lens.

(DANGER: Never look through a telescope without a solar filter)
 
The little Tele Vue Sol Searcher that you see on top of the telescope is just a wonderful piece of inexpensive equipment for lining up the Sun. It has a hole at the front, which the sunlight passes through and falls onto a clear screen when the telescope is lined up with the Sun. I would not be without this great little gadget :-)

This is the first, first quarter Moon for the New Year and it was a lovely clear evening for taking pictures through my telescope. I was a little late to try and capture the X on the terminator line but the big three lunar craters Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus & Arzachel looked spectacular with their sunlit peaks.

The close up images were taken with a Meade 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a focal reducer attached.
 
AVI movie files were captured which were then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4. The full lunar disc was taken with a Canon 700D, I had to put a F6.3 focal reducer in the telescope system to capture the wide field view of the Moon.

It’s New Years Eve and I’ve set the telescope up in the garden to capture our beautiful Moon for the last day of 2019.
 
We have a four-day-old waxing crescent Moon that’s about half way up the north western sky as seen here in Australia. We see the Moon differently here in the land down under, in that the Moons view is upside down (south at the top and north at the bottom) you’ll also notice that the lit portion is also facing the other way…tricky isn’t it :-)
 
At this phase the whole of Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises) is on show in sharp relief from the Suns light. Just to give you an idea how big Mare Crisium is, the surface area is 176,000 sq km and diameter of 570km (that’s about the same area of Great Britain) *Sourced from Hamlyn ‘Atlas of the Moon’ by Antonin Rukl.
 
There are a lot of very interesting features on the lunar surface and I’ve named a few of them on my images, if you become fascinated in the Moon you must get a good lunar atlas or app to help you discover the names of the features on the surface.

 It’s really lovely sitting out here listening to all the fireworks and taking pictures of our nearest neighbour in space…that’s the Moon not the people next door :-))
 
Happy New Year everyone, WooHoo! 2020 is on the way….
 
To download an Australian Moon Phase Calendar for 2020 please go to the link below: Sydney Observatory Moon Phase Calendar
https://maas.museum/sydney-observatory/astronomy-resources/moon-phase-calendar/
 
The close up images were taken with a Meade 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a focal reducer attached. AVI movie files were captured which were then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.
The full lunar disc was taken with a Canon 700D, I had to put a F6.3 focal reducer in the telescope system to capture the wide field view of the Moon.

~ Waxing Crescent Moon & Venus 29th December 2019 ~
​
The crescent Moon is now above Venus in the western sky,
it looked quite spectacular in the dark blue velvety sky this evening.
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens @f11,
the exposure time was 2 seconds and ISO 500.

~ Solstice Sun ~

Today is the summer solstice here in Australia, this is a time when we have the hottest weather and the longest day of the year, unlike the people who live in the northern hemisphere who today are experiencing there shortest day of the year and it’s probably very cold…isn’t our world an amazing place!
 
I took this image at 2.30pm this afternoon through quite a lot of smoke haze with the surrounding landscape having a soft yellow hue that was filtering down from the sky.
 

I couldn’t help myself, but the Sun looked so bland that I decided to have a bit of fun and made a
​ ‘Sunny Christmas Bauble’ to wish everyone a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year :-)
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter. There were eight images stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4. The exposure times were 1/100th second and ISO 500.

​~ Spotless Sun on the 19th December 2019 ~

​I have not taken many images of the Sun lately because it’s been so quite and the surface just so bland to look at.

But when I read on Spaceweather.com that the sunspot inactivity has now broken an all time space record, then I just had to get the camera out and record the event…and Yes, as you can see from my image, it’s still spotless :-)
 
We are now really and truly in the mist of solar minimum and one of the deepest since solar records began!
 
I've also captured a beautiful sunset photo today and because of the smoke haze there are all these awesome colours on display...very pretty.

SUNSPOTS BREAK A SPACE AGE RECORD: Solar Minimum is becoming very deep indeed. Over the weekend, the sun set a Space Age record for spotlessness. So far in 2019, the sun has been without sunspots for more than 270 days, including the last 33 days in a row. Since the Space Age began,
​no other year has had this many blank suns.
 
The previous record-holder was the year 2008, when the sun was blank for 268 days. That was during the epic Solar Minimum of 2008-2009, formerly the deepest of the Space Age. Now 2019 has moved into first place. 
Solar Minimum is a normal part of the 11-year sunspot cycle. The past two (2008-2009 and 2018-2019) have been long and deep, making them "century-class" Minima. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days.
Last week, the NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle Prediction Panel issued a new forecast. Based on a variety of predictive techniques, they believe that the current Solar Minimum will reach its deepest point in April 2020 (+/- 6 months) followed by a new Solar Maximum in July 2025.
​This means that low sunspot counts and weak solar activity could continue for some time to come.

Solar Minimum definitely alters the character of space weather. Solar flares and geomagnetic storms subside, making it harder to catch Northern Lights at mid-latitudes. Space weather grows "quiet." On the other hand, cosmic rays intensify. The sun's weakening magnetic field allows more particles from deep space into the solar system, boosting radiation levels in Earth's atmosphere. Indeed, this is happening now with atmospheric cosmic rays at a 5-year high and flirting with their own Space Age record. It's something to think about the next time you step on an airplane. Stay tuned for updates!
https://spaceweather.com/

This is what our skies are like here at the moment; the sky is full of dust and smoke from our severe drought out west and all the bushfires.  Our fire fighters are doing an incredible job of saving homes and many people are out helping our beautiful wildlife, which are also suffering in this 40C degree heat.
 
At last, thank goodness rain is forecast in the next couple of days, in the mean time it does make for some incredibly fiery sunset displays, even the water looks like it’s on fire!
 
Images were taken from Jabiru Island Park at Paradise Point with a Canon G7 X Mark 11 camera on manual focus; exposure was 1250th second and ISO125.