After nearly a month of gloomy wet weather we finally got a nice hot sunny day, but then the storm clouds built up that resulted in a large band of thunderstorms with very heavy rain and hail :-o 
 
When it was all over, I looked outside and saw this amazing Cumulonimbus cloud with so much incredible structure! As the sun was setting in the west it lit the whole cloud up into a fiery orange/red colour, after sunset you could still see the lightning firing away between the folds, it was just awesome :-D

I was lucky again the following night to get a few minutes of steady seeing to capture some videos of Mars and was very surprised to see so much detail on the surface.  You can clearly see the large plain of Syrtis Major in the images even though the planet is still a long way away from Earth.
 
Mars will be at opposition on the 8th December so it will grow in size over the next couple of months, as it gets closer to Earth.
 
My images were taken at ‘My Stardust Observatory’ with a Meade LX200 GPS 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI videos were captured and stacked in RegiSta6 and processed in PS CS4.

 (Please see my telescope setup below)

We finally have a lovely clear evening sky and the western sky is still ablaze with those stunning colours from those volcanic aerosols high up in the atmosphere from the Hunga-Tonga eruption.
 
About 30 minutes after sunset there is this very eerie bright yellow colour in the sky and then as that fades the sky goes a bright orange colour with a pretty pink and purple hue above. At about 45 minutes after sunset you get to see these gorgeous dark orange colours that are in my photographs, which are very beautiful.
 
Images taken at 6.25pm with a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens, exposure time for first image was 8 seconds & ISO 200, second image was 10 seconds with ISO 400.
 
For the latest observations from NASA’s Earth Observatory please go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere
​

Have you ever wanted to learn the night sky?
Join Noeleen from the Southern Astronomical Society to see how easy it is to find the constellations, planets and other beautiful celestial objects in the night sky, even from your own back garden.
 
Please scan the QR code on the poster below to book or go to GC Libraries What’s on at:
https://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/libraries/Whats-on?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D160827310

Noeleen Lowndes is the former president of the Southern Astronomical Society on the Gold Coast and is now a lifetime member. She has actively been involved with astronomy and space education for over 25 years and has supported Gold Coast Libraries with astronomy events since 2003.
 
Noeleen has been a member with NASA’s Saturn Observation Campaign (SOC) for the past 20 years where she educates the public on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn, then shows the real planet through her large telescope to everyone’s delight.

We are camping at the moment at Flanagan Reserve at Rathdowney near the NSW border. Right in front of our camp facing west is Mt Maroon and 50 minutes after sunset what should I see but the lovely waxing crescent Moon with planet Mercury just about to be occulted by a mountain :-)

Rathdowney is about 150 kilometres west of the Gold Coast out in the country so it has very dark skies at night; to my delight those pretty rusty deep orange volcanic aerosols are still showing up in the twilight sky from the Hunga-Tonga eruption.

A young 2 or 3 day old Moon is the perfect time to take a photo of this lunar phenomenon called Earthshine; it’s just the Earths light reflecting back onto the Moon’s surface but it looks pretty awesome!
​
Images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 28-400mm lens; the first image was a 4 second exposure with ISO100. The lunar images were taken with same camera and lens, set on 400mm with 20 images stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.

What was it like at dawn this morning…just breathtaking!
 
The photographs speak for themselves; those volcanic aerosols high up in our atmosphere from the Hunga-Tonga eruption produce these gorgeous colours seen in the sky above where the Sun will be rising.
​ (Sunrise today is at 6.33am)
 
Images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens, exposure times range from 4 seconds to 1/30th second and ISO100.

​At last after a lot of cloudy weather we’ve had a lovely clear evening to see those beautiful deep purple colours produced by volcanic aerosols from the Hunga-Tonga eruption that are still lingering in our twilight skies.
 
It’s predicted from a few scientific sources that observers here in the Southern Hemisphere could see this pretty sky phenomena for many months to come or maybe up to another whole year! Wow…. That’s amazing!
 
As the months go by you see the different constellations setting in the west
​this time it’s Leo (The lion) and part of Hydra (The Water Serpent)
 
Image taken at 6.25pm, an hour and 10 minutes after the Sun has set (sunset was at 5.15pm) with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens at 18mm, the exposure was 13seconds and ISO320.

~ The volcanic coloured sky before sunrise on the 8th July 2022 ~
From the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai Eruption 

This was the magnificent view outside my bedroom window when I woke up at 5.30am this morning…Wow!

Embedded within those remarkable colours from the volcanic aerosols are the rising constellations of Taurus (with Venus between the bulls horns) and Orion (The Mighty Hunter), this image was taken at 5.50am.
 
The second image was taken 30 minutes later at 6.20am and you can see the dramatic change in colour of the eastern sky with Venus embedded in the pink and purple crepuscular rays in the dawn sky…sunrise is still 20 minutes away at 6.40am.
 
The third image is just 10 minutes before the Sun rises and I’ve noticed that these volcanic aerosols form a halo around the area where it rises, also the colours get noticeable much lighter, you can still just make out Venus.
 
Peter Lowenstein from Zimbabwe and Tara Williams from NSW Australia are also observing this atmospheric phenomenon and regularly post their wonderful images on Spaceweather.com 
 
My images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens; the first image at 5.50am was an 8 second exposure with ISO200. The second image at 6.20am was an exposure of just 1/30th second and ISO200. The third image was taken at 6.28am with an exposure of 1/50th second and ISO100…. Oh, what a beautiful morning it was, I’m very happy to share my images with you :-)

A  rare planetary alignment at dawn with Mercury, Venus, Waning crescent Moon, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn.
​
At 5.50am on 25th June 2022 
 
This was the incredible view before dawn this morning an hour before sunrise showing all the planets with a waning crescent Moon right along the ecliptic. I wanted to try and show you some of the atmospheric colours that we’ve been experiencing in our sky by using a fisheye lens.  The colours are breathtakingly beautiful.
 
These volcanic aerosols are from the Hunga-Tonga underwater volcano that erupted in January in Tonga. I really don’t know why, but the colours are becoming more and more vivid over the last couple of days!
 
Image taken with a Canon 6D Mark11 camera and a Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens @10mm using an 8 second exposure and ISO400. The second image taken with Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, the exposure was 8 seconds and ISO1250.
​
The lunar image was taken with the 18-400mm Tamron lens @400mm, ten images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS, exposures were 1/30th second and ISO100.

The whole western sky was just glowing last night an hour after sunset with those gorgeous orange colours (yes they are back) that are being produced by the volcanic aerosols high up in our atmosphere from the Hunga-Tonga eruption.
 
I called my husband out into the cold night to have a look and he just went Wow! You can see clearly the stars through this material, so the aerosols must be very fine particles!
 
Congratulations to Peter Lowenstein from Mutare, Zimbabwe for making up a beautiful slideshow of his volcanic images and sharing them on Spaceweather. The link to see Peter’s images can be found here at:
https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=185955
 
I’ve only been taking these volcanic sky pictures since March, because in January and February we had dreadful weather here in Queensland with flooding rainfall.
 
These images were taken on the 22nd June 2022 with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens @18mm with a 2.5 second exposure for 1st image at 6.00pm and 2nd image at 6.07pm was a 10 second exposure, both images ISO200.