What an exciting time it is now with a wonderful display of the three planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in the night sky. The magnificent planet Jupiter was the best that I’ve ever seen it with so much detail on its surface and one of its moon called Io not that far away. 
 
The red planet Mars was in a gibbous phase as our planet quickly approaches it for a very close opposition at the end of July and Saturn also looked beautiful and will look even better with opposition at the end of June…so try and make some time to go outside to look up and see some of our planetary neighbours :-)
 
Images were taken at my Stardust observatory during April 2018, with a Meade 10inch LX200 Schmidt Cassgrain telescope and a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached; the conditions were excellent!

I was at my Stardust observatory for a few days this past new Moon and took some beautiful wide field images of our dark southern skies. I was hoping to captured some images of the bright new nova in the constellation of Carina…and I’m so happy to say that I caught it :-)
 
This stunning area of the sky has many thousands of stars, but this new nova was very bright and stood out ever so clearly next to another pale yellow star near the Eta Carina nebula.
 
The All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae only discovered this Nova on The 20th March and I took this image on the 15th April when it has brightened quite considerably…it will be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks!
 
I took the images on the 15th April 2018 with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens with the ISO at 1600.  The camera was piggybacked on a tracking 10inch Meade LX200 telescope in the early hours of the 15th April 2018. There were ten 3-minute images with corresponding dark frames stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS3. The image presented has been cropped to show the Nova and the Eta Carina nebula.

The prestigious David Malin astrophotography awards has now been held and judged and I’m proud to say that I received a ‘Highly Commended’ for my image titled
​~ Mars and Saturn’s glorious encounter with Scorpius and Rho Ophiuchi ~
In the wide field section.
 
The award is not one of the main awards,
but it's recognition that the judge Dr David Malin liked my photograph :-)

(Information for my image)
On the evening of the 7th May 2016 a beautiful cosmic show was going on in our night sky with the magnificent red planet Mars on show close to the stars of Scorpius. Also in the same wide field, was the pretty planet Saturn that was embedded near the dark dust lanes around the glorious area of Rho Ophiuchi,
​which is in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
 
The images were taken at my Stardust Observatory in a very dark sky with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens set at f4.5. The focal length was set at 73mm and ISO1600. There were 14x 5-minute light and 6x5 minute dark images taken, which were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PS CS4. The camera was attached to the top of a tracking Meade LX200 10 inch telescope.

To see all the stunning images that won please go to the 2017 CWAS website at:
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/astrofest/awards/2017_AstroFest_DMA.html
​

I was invited by the lovely people from the Helensvale Library to give a TEDx talk on how I learnt all about the night sky as it may inspire other people to go outside and look up to discover there night sky…I hope it does!
Happy Stargazing :-)
​
~ Starry Starry Night ~
Look up and discover your night sky

The theme of the event was called ‘Make It’ and there were seven wonderful presenters who volunteered there time and story’s to make people think about the topics that everyone was so passionate about.
 
I must say that I have given thousands of talks, but this one was completely different because I had to give a bit of my personal experiences for the story, which is something that I don’t usually do, but I did enjoy sharing those special moments :-)
 
I also discovered that a TED talk is not a talk where you teach, its purpose is to bring one really great idea to the audience that may help, challenge or created a desire for somebody to try something new in there lives, and to present it all in under 18minutes or less!!!
 
Also, it’s quite scary standing on that red circle, but the whole experience was just so exciting and fun. I would like to thank all the incredible people who helped out on the night, especially Karen Gunnarsson and Dani Watson the organizers of this wonderful TEDx event, for making the evening such a wonderful success for everyone that attended. I will post the link to the video here as soon as it’s ready...

​The whole event was just awesome!!

Please find the YouTube link to my TEDx talk below and I hope you feel inspired to go out outside in your garden, Look up and discover your night sky :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkaXnghax8c

Link to article at:
http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/entertainment/gold-coast-tedx-talk-to-see-karl-smith-aka-the-lyrical-swap-rapping-for-public-speaking/news-story/765c74f4d7646fb2ffda6ae94eca16cd

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) stands out prominently at the moment in our beautiful dark skies as a large cloudy patch and it’s often mistaken just for that by newcomers looking at the night sky…
 
This irregular type galaxy is one of the two satellite galaxies that are gravitationally bound to our own Milky Way galaxy and is approximately 180,000 light years away from us; the other one is the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).
 
Here in the land down under they are nearly always on display as they are circumpolar and rotate around our south celestial pole. I should rephrase that and say we on earth rotate, but we don’t usually say that :-)
 
Image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens set at f3.2, which was attached to the top of a tracking Meade LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at my Stardust Observatory. Exposures were 30x1 minute subs and 20x1 minute darks with ISO2000, then stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4.

Centaurus A is a very large and peculiar galaxy in the Constellation of Centuarus. It appears to be a giant elliptical that has recently merged with a barred spiral galaxy which is why it has those amazing dark dust lanes…it’s also affectionately know as the Hamburger Galaxy :-)
 
This is the galaxy that SAS members Peter Marples and Greg Bock found there last supernova in on the 8th February 2016, which was designated SN2016adj
If you would like to know more about the BOSS supernova team then please go to there website at:
 http://www.bosssupernova.com
​
The images were taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch telescope with an f6.3 focal reducer at prime focus at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn at the end of February 2017. There were 20x2 minute subs and 10x2 minute dark frames using ISO2500, images were stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4 using a Canon 70D SLR camera.

This week we have the Magic Millions Horse Event being held here on the Gold Coast, unbeknown to a lot of these entrepreneurs, there’s also a stunning horsey show going on in our heavens above :-)

You will find this remarkable dark nebula not far from the bright star Alnitak, which is one of the three stars that make up the belt of Orion…It’s a swirling cloud of dark gases and dust that looks like a horses head or the Loch Ness monster if you come from Scotland...
 
The dark shape is caused by thick dust blocking out the starlight from behind the nebula, 
​mainly from the bright star Sigma Orionis.
 
I’ve processed the nebula a bit differently this time by using one of the artistic filters in Photoshop (dry brush) to make the image look more like a painting…just something a bit different.
 
Image taken with a 80mm refractor telescope and a Canon 700D camera on top of a tracking LX200 10inch Meade telescope at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn, there were 25x 7-minute subs and 10x 7-minute darks, ISO 1600.  Images were stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4.

​This is the whole view of the western sky when the crescent Moon joined Jupiter, Mercury and Venus…it’s not very often that you can capture the planet Mercury especially with it being positioned above Venus in the sky.

Photo taken at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn with a Canon 70D camera and a 17-85mm lens set at 20mm, ISO 200 and a 1/5th of a second exposure.

​The western sky looked so pretty on the 6th August with a new crescent Moon making a lovely conjunction with Jupiter, the sky was so clear that you could capture the three moons of Jupiter around the planet with just a camera and lens on a tripod.

Photo taken at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn with a Canon 70D and a 100-400mm lens set at 260mm, exposure was 1.6 seconds and SO 800.

The pretty flower shape Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237) is in the constellation of Monoceros (The Unicorn) and is a huge cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the open star cluster (NGC 2244) it’s about 100 light years in diameter and lies approximately 5000 light years away from us here on Earth…Wow, it’s a very pretty area in the night sky!
 
My images were taken with a Meade 80mm refractor telescope piggybacked on a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope using a Canon 70D camera. Exposures were 10x10 minute lights and 5x10 darks at ISO 1000, stacked in DSS (Deep Sky Stacker) and processed in Photoshop.
 
The constellation of Monoceros is in between Orion and Canis Major in the night sky, you’ll easily see the lovely open star cluster NGC 2244 with a pair of binoculars…but the Rosette Nebula is very faint, its beauty is best seen in a long exposure photograph :-)