I had three perfect nights under the stars at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn in early September 2024.
​This is a very dark sky site in western Queensland.
 
As I process the images I’ll post them onto my website beginning with capturing the faint Cat’s Paw and Lobster nebulae in the area around the sting of Scorpius.
 
At this time of the year Scorpius and Sagittarius and the whole band of the Milky Way is at the zenith, it gives you plenty of time to take lots of images.
 
For this weekend, I decided to do just wide field images of the Milky Way using a Canon 70D camera and Canon 70-200 f2.8 lens. The camera was attached to the tracking Meade 10inch telescope that was polar aligned in the observatory.
 
Most of the images were an exposure time of 2-3 minutes and ISO2000. I captured at least 20-30 frames and also corresponding dark frames for stacking. Images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and processed in PS.
 
When looking at the star rich areas of the Milky Way you come across some very dark patches among the stars. I have since found out they are called Barnard Objects after a man called Edward E Barnard who saw them as ‘holes in the heavens’.
 
They are dark nebulae where so much interstellar gas and dust obscures the light from the stars that are behind it, it’s very similar to what you see with the Coalsack Nebula near the Southern Cross (Crux).
 
I have been coming across these objects when doing wide field images of the milky way for some time now and have been intrigued by them, so from now on I’ll try and number them on my images.
 
To find out more about these dark objects please go to the Harvard Education website link: Dark Markings in the Sky
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~agoodman/astro208/articles/Barnard.html
 
(Please note, unfortunately a lot of the links are now not in use, I’ve only included the link because it gives the general information)
 
This is another very useful and excellent website where you can download a chart to use with your images at:
https://exhibit-archive.library.gatech.edu/barnard/
​

After taking images of all the planets with the Meade 10inch telescope, I attached my Canon 70D camera with a Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens to the top of the telescope and tracked the night sky.

​I then took some wide field image of Saturn among the faint stars of Aquarius to show its position among the stars.
 
I’ve also added the image of Saturn that I took earlier in the evening through the telescope to show what you can see in the telescope…Saturn’s beautiful rings are now nearly edge on and will disappear next year as viewed from Earth.
 
This event only happens twice as Saturn orbits the Sun in its nearly 30-year orbit, so we only see the rings edge on every fourteen and a half years!

It’s Saturday the 31st August 2024 and I’m finally out at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn for a weekend under the heavens :-)
 
The sky is perfectly clear, as I look to the western sky brilliant Venus can be seen going down low in the sunset coloured sky…it's very pretty.
 
I will try and capture an image of Venus with my Meade 10inch telescope tomorrow night but I think the turbulent might be too much with the atmospheric conditions…but I will try!
 
My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod at f4.5, with a 2-second exposure and ISO800 at 6.28pm.

~ The Sun: Our Spectacular Star at Runaway Bay Library ~
 
I had a wonderful time at the Runaway Bay Library presenting one of my lectures on our amazing star the Sun. This topic is very close to my heart as I’m an avid solar observer and I was able to share all my solar experiences with everyone who came along to the presentation.
 
These included showing all my images of the Sun, solar eclipses and beautiful aurora along with rare pictures of the two transits of Venus.
 
Everybody learnt how dynamic the Sun really is and how safely they can observe solar events themselves with the right equipment.
 
A great time was had by all and thanks you again to the librarians from the Runaway Bay Library who provided a safe and happy place for the event.
 
Please find some photos below from the evening, happy and safe solar observing, Noeleen Lowndes :-D

With the (Ha) solar scope there was a lovely arch prominence firing away on the lower eastern limb of the Sun late this afternoon with quite a few wispy prominences all around the whole solar limb.

In the little white light refractor telescope you could see a completely different view with lots of small sunspots sprinkled across the solar surface. Sunspot AR 3727 & AR 3719 that are at opposite sides of the Sun look like twins as they are the same size and shape as one another…. quite surprising to see two sunspots that look so alike!

The white light image was taken with Orion 80mm refractor telescope with glass solar filter attached and a Canon 700D camera plus 2x Barlow lens. The Ha images were taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens.

~ Imaging equipment (Ha) Lunt solar telescope & Orion 80mm refractor with Canon 700D plus 2x barlow lens ~

~ Large Sunspots AR3712, 3713 & 3716 on western limb of Sun 23rd June 2024 ~
 
Those three large sunspot groups have now rotated toward the western limb of the Sun. There was a lot of cloud late this afternoon and I just managed to get these images with the little refractor telescope, by the time I got the Lunt (Ha) telescope set up the sky had completely clouded out!

Oh dear, I did see some great activity on the surface of the Sun in (Ha) but was not quick enough to capture it!
 
The white light images of the Sun was taken with a small Orion 80mm refractor telescope and a Canon 700D camera plus 2x Barlow lens, exposures were 1/500th second and ISO200, 25 images captured and stacked in RegiStax6 processed in PS.

​
Three Large Sunspot AR3712, AR3713 & AR3716
on surface of Sun on the 19th June 2024 

​The sun looked awesome late this afternoon with those three large sunspot groups on the surface of the Sun, AR3712 is looking huge!
Looking through the Lunt (Ha) solar telescope you could see solar activity around each sunspot area.
 
After taking pictures of the Sun I looked around and saw a beautiful waxing gibbous in the eastern sky and took a couple of images once it got dark.
 
The white light images of the Sun & Moon were taken with a small Orion 80mm refractor telescope and a Canon 700D camera plus 2x Barlow lens. The Ha images taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens.

By late this afternoon new sunspot group AR3712 had grown even larger on the surface of the Sun. The other sunspot AR3716 also appears to be getting bigger and is an interesting shape. There were a couple of active prominences around the limb and a dark filament on the solar surface as seen in the (Ha) solar telescope.
 
We are now having some beautiful clear sunny days, perfect for solar observing :-)
 
The white light image was taken with Orion 80mm refractor telescope with glass solar filter attached and a Canon 700D camera plus 2x Barlow lens, exposures were 1/500th sec and ISO200.
 
The Ha images taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens, this is a composite image with one set of images for disc (exposures 1/320th sec and ISO200) and one set for faint prominences (exposures 1/20th sec and ISO200).

I quickly set up my camera and tripod when I saw a break in the clouds that lasted just long enough to take my first images of this huge sunspot that produced that CME causing all those incredible aurora’s worldwide!
 
We are too far south here on the Gold Coast at 28’ S latitude to see any of those stunning aurora, but that didn’t stop me from getting up at 3am this morning to try and capture something.
 
I did capture a weird purple colouring in the sky looking to the south, you can even see the Southern Cross and pointers going down in the south west, so maybe there was some atmospheric phenomenon happening up there in the sky to produce that strange colour!
 
Solar Images captured with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter attached, making a focal length of 1280mm. Exposures were 1/500th second and ISO200, 20 images stacked in Registak6 and processed in PS.
 
The 3am sky images captured with Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 11-16mm lens at f2.8, ISO800 and 20-second exposures.

~ Strange purple background colour in the sky ~

On our Holland America cruise ship called the Koningsdam, we did a spectacular trip up the inside passage to view the magnificent glaciers. I was determined to try and capture the northern lights while we were there and the town of Skagway was the most northern point of our night-time journey at latitude 59.45’ North.
 
Late in the evening of the 30th April after it finally got dark, I set up on the Aft (back) deck to see if I could capture any aurora. I had checked Spaceceather.com to see where the aurora oval was and from the diagram it was not looking very promising from my location.
 
We left Skagway late at 8pm and were cruising in very calm waters, I tried to take some picture of where I thought they would be but no such luck, it didn’t help that I was complexly bamboozled by the direction we were going in and the different constellations that I was not use to seeing as I’m a southern hemisphere girl ;-)
 
I did have my Stellarium app thank goodness, to show where the northern sky was and to my relief I could see the Andromeda galaxy in my pictures so I knew I was shooting in the right direction!
 
I was also keeping an eye on the strength of the Aurora Oval (NOAA) that is freely available on Spaceweather.com. As you can see from the chart below the aurora forecast was not very strong but I could see from our ships position that we may have a small chance of seeing them on the northern horizon.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast
https://spaceweather.com/