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. 

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.

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 :-)
​
https://www.facebook.com/CWASDMA/
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/astrofest/DMA/2018_shortlist/
https://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au

I drove out of my garage today and looked up in the sky and saw this stunning solar halo from my driveway…that was it, I jumped out of the car and starting taking photos, you can also see part of another circle up in the top of the corners of the image, I’m not sure if that is the 46 degree circle?
 
That perfect circle around the Sun is created by special sized ice crystals that refract the suns lights and is 22 degrees away from the Sun.
 
I kept an eye on the sky all day and saw sundogs and my first circumzenithal arc, I have never seen one before so I was very excited, it only lasted a few minutes then it was gone…but what a thrill it was to see!

~ My first view ever of a circumzenithal arc, it's associated with the 46 degree circle around th Sun ~

A circumzenithal arc (CZA) is like an upside-down rainbow, it’s another optical phenomenon belonging to the family of halos and that is why you may see one when there's a halo in the sky. They are associated with the super huge 46 degree circle that surround the Sun or Moon when high cirrus or cirrostratus clouds are in the sky like there was today.

If you would like to know more about these objects please go to Les Cowley’s excellent AOptics website at:

https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(optical_phenomenon)

These images were taken on the 30th June 2018 with just a Canon G15 point and shoot camera that I always have in my handbag and I used manual focus and the auto settings in the camera.

The western sky was so pretty yesterday afternoon with the new crescent Moon and the planet Venus shinning brilliantly beside one another for a close conjunction on the 16th June 2018.
​
My Images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod. First image ISO1600 lens set at 25mm and exposure time was half a second, second image lens set at 117mm, ISO6400 exposure time 1/6th second exposure :-)

Beautiful Earthshine on the surface of the Moon, sometimes it can be very hard to capture but not tonight…it looked so beautiful here at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn.

Again, a lot of the time you don’t need a telescope to capture the beauty of the night sky, just grab your camera and lenses and take the pictures, I do ;-)

~ Very Bright Sundog in the Sky ~

​What a surprise I got when I came out of our local shopping centre, looked up and saw this incredible bright Sundog in the sky. It’s the most brightest and colourful one that I’ve ever seen!
 
I quickly grabbed my camera to take some photos; by this time many people were looking up at the sky and wondering what it was. I’m afraid I didn’t make it any easier for them to understand as I tried to explain that what they were looking at was called a Sundog…what a funny name that is one little boy said as he smiled up at me, I can only image what was going through his little mind :-)
 
My photos were taken with a Canon G15 camera with a 1/2000th second exposure and ISO80 with a 23mm focal length using manual focus.

If you would like to know more about these wonders in the sky please go to Les Cowley’s excellent website called Atmospheric Optics at: https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm
And also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dog

I was driving home late yesterday afternoon when I saw this pretty sunset with sunrays streaming up the western sky, these are known as crepuscular rays :-)
 
I quickly stopped my car by a park and took some pictures; it was then that I noticed the lovely shadow and iridescent clouds close by the Sun, which was hidden behind the dark clouds.
 
Crepuscular rays are an optical phenomenon caused by the light of the Sun being blocked by the dark gaps in the clouds, usually by stratocumulus clouds. The rays can only appear if there are enough particles (ice crystals) in the atmosphere to diverge the unshadowed shafts of sunlight from the setting sun, which scatters the sunlight.
 
Once again, another amazing thing to see in your daytime sky, keep looking out for all these wonders,
​you never know what you’ll see and kept your camera handy at all times :-)
 
Image taken with just my point and shoot Canon G15 camera,
the exposure setting was 1/2000th second and ISO 80. 

I have just returned from a wonderful trip to Norway to see the Northern Lights on board one of the Hurtigruten ships called the MS Nordkapp that sailed from Bergen to Kirkenes (top of Norway) and back to Bergen.
 
The scenery was just stunning but what I was so taken with was the lighting from the Sun, in Australia our sunlight is very strong but in Norway it was so soft and crisp, just so perfect for a photographer to take beautiful pictures.
 
Every time I took an image with the Sun in the picture it would softly flare with my lens, I really liked this, as with our Sun in Australia there is no way this would happen, as it would just saturate the sensor in the camera!
 
My main purpose for the trip was to capture the stunning Auroras which I successfully did, please see my Astro blogs for the dates of the 7th and 10th of March.  But I was also on the lookout for some of those special atmospheric phenomenon which you get in icy skies…. and yes, I’m happy to say I managed to capture some of these also.
 
One is of a Sun Pillar with the glorious colours of a sunset, the other is a full solar halo with sundogs, the other ones are of a beautiful soft Sun flare in an early afternoon sky (I know it’s a lens flare but its pretty).  And finally a sunset image from the Hertigruten ship with golden Sun glitters on the water.
 
What a beautiful country Norway is, hopefully I may visit this lovely land again in the future, it is such a shame that Australia is so far away, but it was worth the days of travel to get there :-)
 
All images were taken along the coastline of Norway with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on the deck of the moving ship. 

~ Look out for interesting solar phenomena during the Day ~ 
 
I’m always on the lookout for optical atmospheric phenomena in the daytime sky that’s usually caused by light from the Sun reflecting and refracting on particles such as ice, dust, smoke ect, in our Earths atmosphere.
 
The four images above are some of the happenings viewed in very cold skies (-15 to -21 degrees Celsius) on my recent trip through the waterways and Fjords of Norway on board one of the Hurtigruten ship the MS Nordkapp.
 
Sun Pillar: I’ve only ever seen two of these in my life and this one had all the stunning pink, purple and orange colours of sunset.  It’s caused by a vertical shaft of light that extends upward and sometimes downward from the Sun, they are usually associated with thin, high-level cirrus and cirrostratus clouds that have horizontally hexagonal orientated plates of ice crystals…very pretty to see.
 
Solar Halo and Sundogs are also an ice crystal phenomena which are seen in the same sort of sky as Sun pillars but this time the ice crystals behave like prisms and mirrors refracting and reflecting the sunlight between there faces sending light in particular directions and producing the famous 22 degree halo around the Sun.  The sundogs on either side (real name parhelia) are also results of these shape ice crystals.
 
The sunset image with the golden glitters on the water, is another amazing image because all those tiny golden glitters are mini Suns reflected on the water, so next time you see these things take a photo.
Our world is such an incredible place with lots to see if only we take a bit more time to look!!!
Go on, see what you can find :-)
 
For further information about these incredible features in the sky please go to the websites below:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(optical_phenomenon)
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/optical-phenomenon.html