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

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.
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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

~ Amazing Auroras ~

The sky all around our ship just suddenly exploded into bright curtains of light last night with the most amazing pulsating auroras that were all over the sky.  I’ve never see anything like this in all my life, the huge twisting curtains of lights waved and danced all over the sky, it was a breathtaking experience that I will never forget…ever :-)

I’m currently on board the Hurtigruten’s ship MS Nordkapp in Norway and I knew that we were going to get a stream of plasma from the Sun from that coronal hole that had opened up a few days ago (thanks to the Spaceweather.com website) and our ship just happened to be at sea between Skjervoy and Tromso when it hit our atmosphere.
How incredible was that!!!

Images taken with a Canon 70D camera on a tripod and a cable release, exposures were for only 2.6 seconds because the aurora were so bright with,  ISO5000 and ISO6400, I used a Tokina 11-16mm wide field lens, set at 11mm and f2.8.
What an absolutely magnificent experience this has been!

Over the last couple of days we have had these incredible thunderstorms hit south east Queensland and experienced spectacular displays of lightning that blaze all over the sky accompanied by deafening cracks and booms of thunder…its all been so exciting to watch every evening :-)
 
The image above was taken on the 13th February with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens set at 19mm on a tripod with a cable release. I just set the images to 5 second exposures and do continues shooting as there’s no way I could catch them any other way.  (ISO100)
 
The second image below was taken on the 11th February with the same camera and lens also set at 19mm, but the exposure was only 0.3 second as there was so much light in the sky from the lightning…it was awesome!

It was a real disappointment that the east coast of Australia missed out on viewing the total eclipse of the Moon because of heavy rain, but late yesterday afternoon a beautiful rainbow was briefly on show with its reflection in the water to lighten my spirits :-)
 
Image was taken on the 3rd February 2018 at home with a Canon G15 camera set on manual focus and auto exposure.