I was just heading upstairs to take a shower when I looked out the bedroom window and saw this beautiful dark orange Moon rising and being enveloped by dark clouds racing across its surface…. Wow, it looked stunning!
 
I ran as fast as I could downstairs to grab my camera and take some images before it disappeared, I only had time to hand hold the camera on top of the pool fence, but I managed to capture a couple of lovely images.
 
There is no processing here, the colour is real the only thing I did was crop the image. I used a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400 mm lens at 400mm, ISO400 and a 1/15th time exposure.
 
The Moon is just one day after full moon and the view is as seen from the Southern Hemisphere here in the land down under in Australia :-)

We had severe thunderstorms hit our area yesterday that not only sent the GC600 Supercar race in Surfers Paradise into utter chaos, but also produced some incredible weather!
 
First of all, it was nearly as dark as night in the afternoon when the storm hit with lightning and hail, then in the west it cleared enough for the light of the Sun to shine through in a small narrow band which produced this eerie bright light in the east which only lit up a path where the houses were across the waterway.
 
Then a glorious rainbow came out which was reflected in the water, then the whole sky turned a pretty salmon colour…it was all very exciting for me, but not so for all the racing car drivers and fans on the racetrack!
 
Images were taken on Sunday the 21st October 2018 with a Canon 70D camera and a 18-400mm Tamron lens with ISO 100 and mostly 1/100th second exposures.

The golden sunset yesterday afternoon on North Stradbroke Island (Minjerribab) was just so beautiful. As the tide was coming in on the beach at Adder Point I was able to capture a pretty glitter path to the Sun, where you can see hundreds of little Suns reflected in the waves and on the water.
 
There are many ways to enjoy and capture our amazing Star the Sun :-)
 
Image was taken on the 27th August 2018 with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 70mm and F11, the exposure time was 1/500th of a second and ISO 100.

To find out more about this beautiful island and its culture please go to the Queensland Governments website at:
https://www.npsr.qld.gov.au/parks/naree-budjong-djara/culture.html

There had been quite a lot of cirrocumulus cloud mixed with high cirrus clouds crossing the sky today which always makes me keep an eye out for atmospheric phenomena of any kind…especially Sundogs and solar halo’s.
 
But today I got a real treat; not only was there a lovely Sundog in the sky, there were also these unusual soft pastel streaks of thin coloured cloud between thicker layers of clouds, they were very pretty and striking in colour.
 
The colours are caused by the light from the Sun being diffracted out in the sky by the tiny ice crystals in the thin cirrus cloud which creates this rainbow like effect…it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it spread out so far across the sky like this :-)
 
If you would like to read more about these pretty iridescent clouds please go to Les Cowley’s excellent Atmospheric Optics website at: https://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/irid1.htm
 
Images were taken on the 7th August 2018 with just my point and shot Canon G15 camera that I always keep in my handbag; the camera was set on manual focus. 

The Moon was a beautiful golden colour as it rose in the evening sky last night, we have a lot of swans on our lake at the moment and they were gliding past in the glitter path created by the moonlight. I had to wait quite a while for the right moment to capture one of them fully in the moonlit path…and I got it :-)
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 77mm, ISO 400 and exposure time 1/6th of a second. I took another corresponding image at a quicker exposure of 1/30th second because the moons surface was so bright, and then just blended the moons surface only into the picture.

This was the beautiful view on our waterway just after sunset this evening with the Moon glitter on the water and Mars the only other bright light other than the full Moon in the eastern sky; a swan passing by on the water just completed the pretty picture :-)
 
My photos were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens.
 
We will see the first part of the lunar eclipse here on the east coast of Queensland early in the morning (28th July) but it does not begin (U1) until 4.24am with totality beginning at 5.30am. By the time totality ends, the eclipsed Moon will have set. At least we’ll see the first half of the eclipse…that is, if the clouds don’t spoil the show!

We stayed a few nights in the beautiful Warrumbungle National Park in NSW where the world famous Siding Spring Observatory is located.  While camping in the park in a very cold -6 degrees, I managed to get some really lovely images of the night sky with just my camera and lenses on a tripod.

The sky was just so amazingly beautiful, diamonds in the sky beautiful :-)

This image is of the South Celestial Pole above the trees, to the right of the image that trailing smudge is associated with millions of stars in the Milky Way where  the Southern Cross (Crux) is going down to the west.

This is just a one image with an exposure time of 7314 seconds (2hours) which included another 2 hour in camera dark frame. I used a Canon 700D camera and a Sigma 10-20mm lens set at 11mm and f4.5, the ISO was 200 and the image was taken on the night of the 17th – 18th July 2018.

The night sky is a stargazer’s delight at the moment with the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars spread right across the evening sky on the ecliptic and the center of our Milky Way galaxy right in the middle of them…it looks so beautiful, you must go outside and have a look :-)
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I took these images just two nights ago when the waxing crescent Moon had nearly set at the Warrumbungle National Park in NSW. I used a Canon 70D camera and a Tokina 10-16mm fisheye lens set at 11mm and f3.5. The exposure time was 20 seconds, and ISO 3200, five images were stacked in DSS and processed in PS.

I could see the brilliant planet Venus ever so clearly close to a new crescent Moon late this afternoon in a beautiful clear blue sky. Then later on as the sky became dark the elusive planet Mercury could be seen low on the western horizon. This was all happening in the constellation of Leo the Lion with its alpha star Regulus between the two planets, which also lies very close to the ecliptic.

Images were taken in the very dark skies at the Warrumbungle National Park in NSW with a Canon 70D camera on a tripod and using a Tamron 18-400mm lens.

For the day time image of the conjunction, the lens was set at 400mm, ISO 400 and exposure was 1/500th second.
For the evening image the lens was set at 35mm with a 1 second exposure and ISO1600.

I’m so excited because one of my beautiful aurora images titled ‘The Northern Lights in the Arctic Night’ has been chosen as a finalist in this years CWAS David Malin Awards astrophoto competition in the Nightscapes section, Wow, that's amazing :-)
 
What happens now is during the CWAS astrofest conference on the weekend of the 14th & 15th July, David Malin will introduce us all and our images and an overall winner will be announced in each section, to win a monetary voucher kindly donated by Canon Australia, along with lovely plaques and certificates.
 
But the most exciting thing about the whole competition is that all of our beautiful images will be professionally printed and framed to be display at the visitors centre at CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescopes in NSW for a whole year.
 
Then, another set of the images will tour the country and go to other observatories and museums, so many many people will see our images and wonder at the beauty of the night sky…how very exciting is all that!
 
Please go to the links below to see my Aurora image and also all the other finalist chosen this year, I’ll let you know soon how I went…. Noeleen :-)
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https://www.facebook.com/CWASDMA/
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/astrofest/DMA/2018_shortlist/
https://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au