While coming back on the sea ferry across Moreton Bay, I looked up into the sky and saw this pretty Sun halo around the Sun and just as I took the picture a couple of welcome swallows flew by in the sea breeze :-) 
 
A solar halo is a very interesting optical phenomenon that’s caused by the Suns light interacting with ice crystals in very high cirrus type clouds. You can also see the same phenomenon when you have a full Moon in the night-time sky. Another interesting fact is this ring around the Sun or Moon is exactly 22 degrees!
 
You can find out more about the science of solar and lunar halos at:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm
 
My image was taken on Sunday the 28th March 2021 with a Canon G7X camera Mark 11 camera; the exposure time was 1/400th second with ISO200 using manual focus.

After an early morning rain shower I raced outside to see if there was a rainbow in the sky…and to my utter delight there in the western sky was a stunning double rainbow with a supernumerary bow under the primary.
 
You have to be very quick to capture these brilliant coloured rainbows because the clouds move quickly and the Sun comes out and it all vanishes just like that!
 
Supernumeraries are formed because two rays of light may follow slightly different paths within a raindrop but still emerge in the same direction.
 
This gives rise to interference between the two rays and produces the alternating bright and dark bands in the supernumerary bows. The intensity of the colours gives an indication of the size of the raindrops.
 
To read more about rainbows and explore the science behind Atmospheric Optics please go to Les Cowley’s excellent website at: https://www.atoptics.co.uk
 
This image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Sigma 10-20mm lens @12mm, ISO 200 and exposure time was 1/250th second. 

I looked up into the sky and saw this pretty partial Sun halo, all day long there were beautiful high wispy cirrus clouds over the sky and at some stage I was sure a halo would appear…and it did :-)
 
Image taken on the 28th December 2020 with a Canon G7X Mark11 on manual focus and F11 aperture using ISO125.

Keep looking up…you never know what you’ll find!

We have had so much cloud and rain for over two weeks now, but last night the cloud cleared just long enough to view this great conjunction between the two largest planets in our Solar System...Woohoo, I was so excited!
 
To the naked eye the planets looked like one point of light, but as soon as you magnified the view with a camera lens you could just make out the tiny separation between them.
 
I again chose my favourite house across the road to take the wide field image of the planets above their home, because it looked so pretty with all there Christmas lights on display, the children who live there will be so excited when I show them these pictures :-)
 
It would have been wonderful to have captured the event with my telescope, but it was not to be, I just had to make do with running up and down the street to find a good place to take pictures and dodging all the trees, house roofs and clouds…and I did it :-))
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod; the first image was an exposure of 3.2 seconds and ISO400. With the second image I attached a 2x convertor to make a focal length of 1280mm with an exposure of 0.6 second and ISO1600 the image is cropped.

We managed to grab a couple of days to visit the Queensland North Coast at Noosa last weekend and were rewarded with this magical sunset over Lake Doonella at Tewantin. While I was taking my pictures there was a very lucky fisherman reeling in quite a few flathead fish for his dinner :-)
 
If you look closely at the image you’ll see some really unusual clouds that look like fine hair floating in the sky. These clouds are called Cirrus clouds and it looks like there is a very strong wind shear up there making them spread out like fine filaments.
 
I’ve never seen Cirrus cloud in this pattern before; it looks like these particular clouds are called Cirrus fibratus clouds…how exciting!  Genus: Cirrus (curl of hair)
 
I found this information on Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_cloud
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera with a Tamron 18-400mm lens attached set at different focal lengths with an ISO 100.

~ The beautiful colours of the “Belt of Venus” ~
​
This is such a pretty sky phenomena and all you have to do is look to the eastern sky after the Sun has set in the west to see these beautiful blue and pink colours spread across the sky.
 
My home faces east, so when it’s nice and clear I always race outside in the hope of seeing these pretty blue and pink hues of our Earths shadow in the sky.
 
Sometimes it's just a wisp of colour and very faint and at other times it’s very vibrant like my image above, I’m always on the look out for it, why don’t you try and see it too and perhaps take a picture.
 
What’s so remarkable about this image is that you don’t even have to leave Earth to see our planets shadow in space…. isn’t that just so awesome!
 
Image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens; focal length was set at 20mm and aperture at f3.5.  The ISO400 and the exposure time was 1/60th second, camera was on a tripod.
 
I took another image of the Full Moon embedded in the ‘Belt of Venus’ on the 6th June 2020 with lots of science information about this phenomenon, please go to that blog at:
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-full-moon-immersed-in-dusty-pink-colours-of-the-belt-of-venus
​

The late afternoon sky looked just so pretty with the colours of pink and blue in the eastern sky and the neatly full Moon rising between the bands.
 
If you look to the eastern sky after the sun has set you will see this astronomical phenomenon know as the Belt of Venus it’s also know as the Girdle of Venus too. This dusty pink band layered between the blue sky above and the lower deep blue-grey band below runs all along the horizon before sunrise or after sunset.
 
It’s related to our Earths shadow which extends millions of kilometres out into space, so next time you are watching a beautiful sunset take a moment to turn around and see if you can see this spectacular phenomenon low in the eastern sky.
 
I have just found this very interesting website called World of Phenomena that explains the ‘Belt of Venus’ very well along with a lot of other incredible phenomena that you’ll find in the world and up above:
https://www.phenomena.org/atmospheric/beltofvenus/
 
Wikipedia ‘Belt of Venus’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_of_Venus
​

The both images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod.

​The wide field image is cropped to a vertical image and the exposure time was 1/160th second with ISO400. With the lunar image the lens was set at 400mm with an exposure time of 1/250th second and ISO400, eight images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4, image was also cropped.

When I looked out my window late this morning, I saw this most amazing colourful ring right around the Sun. I flew downstairs, grabbed my camera and ran outside to capture it before it disappeared. I tried to block out some of the bright Sun with a wild grass plant that I found in the garden and it worked perfectly J
 
There is a lot of science behind one of these 22-degree halos around the Sun and for it to be displayed for us to see there has to be the right shape and size ice crystals in the sky. I’m always on the look out for them when this high cirrostratus cloud in covering the sky, you also can see a lunar halo when the Moon is in a larger phase…. so as I always say keep looking up, you never know what you’ll find!
 
To find out more please go to a couple of informative websites below:
Les Cowley, Atmospheric Optics website at:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circular.htm
​
There is an excellent explanation and diagrams on how a Sun Halo is produced on the
WW2010 University of Illinois website at:
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/opt/ice/halo/22.rxml

Image taken with a Canon G7x Mark11 on manual focus, with ISO125 and exposure time of 1/200th second.
(Be very careful not to look directly at the Sun, use your camera screen to safely compose the shot)

I could not believe my eyes when I looked outside late yesterday afternoon and saw this most beautiful rainbow in the sky; it was so vivid in colour and right before my eyes a double bow developed. As I moved around the garden I could see its reflection in the water…it was just stunning!
 
I had to keep running inside to change lenses to capture the whole rainbow and finally settled on my Tokina fisheye 10-17mm lens set on 10mm to capture the double rainbow. When I went out onto the boat pontoon I was so surprised to see that the reflection in the water made a full circle rainbow…how cool was that :-)
 
Images were taken on the 24th May using a Canon 70D camera and assortment of lenses grabbed very quickly from my camera bag using a Canon 10-20mm lens & Tokina fisheye lens.

To find out more about rainbows please go our own
​Australian Government Bureau of Metrology (BOM) website at:
http://media.bom.gov.au/social/blog/899/ask-bom-how-do-rainbows-form/

I was on my way home when I saw these amazing coloured iridescent clouds in the sky and just had to stop the car to take some photos.
 
These clouds were very dramatic with some remarkable shapes, including one that looked like it was breaking free to fly across the sky…with some of our home restrictions being lifted now from COVID-19 that’s exactly the way I’m feeling too :-)
 
Cloud iridescence is an optical phenomenon caused by sunlight scattering through the small ice crystals in the clouds; you can also see the Sun in both of the images that is the source of this beautiful display.
 
The images were taken with a Canon G7X Mark11 camera on manual focus, both with ISO125 and exposures of 1/1250th second & 1/1000th second.