SAS club members supported this wonderful lunar event by bringing along there telescopes and camera equipment for the public to enjoy looking at our amazing Moon.  As an added bonus the beautiful planets Saturn and Jupiter were also on display to the delight of the people who came along to enjoy the evening.
 
A few Stardust Junior Astronomy Club families came along also and were thrilled to see real night sky objects in the telescopes, including our incredible Moon :-)
 
My lunar images were taken at the event with the Meade LX50 8-inch telescope and a Canon 700D camera plus an added 2x Barlow lens for the close up picture.

(Please note: When I get there permission I'll post more pictures of members with telescopes)

What was it like…just beautiful :-)
 
Images were taken with a Canon G7x Mk11 camera on manual focus, with 0.6-second exposure and ISO 200.

~ Super Moons beautiful ‘Glitter Path’ reflected on Tranquillity Lake ~

This was the beautiful view of the rising full super moon on our lake with its very long glitter path that was shimmering its moonlight all the way to touch me…Wow!
 
A super moon is just a term to reflect that it’s closer to Earth in its orbit than usual, we are lucky enough to have two super Moons this month with another full Moon on the 31st August.  This second full Moon is called a blue Moon as two full moons in a month only happen once in a blue Moon.
 
It's nice to see we are having a bit of fun with astronomy.
 
The Stardust Junior Astronomy Club kids just loved learning all about the Super and Blue Moon this month with there astronomy session, they will be on the lookout for all the different phases to enjoy.
 
 
Image taken with a Canon G7x Mark11 camera on manual focus, one-second exposure and ISO200.

We had a lovely clear night for this special event, it was quite interesting to see the soft shadow on the Moon as it entered into the Earths penumbra, the outer limb stayed very bright.

The eclipse began at 1.14am, with maximum at 3.22am and ending at 5.31am and visually you could not see much difference in the light on the surface of the Moon until at maximum.

I have taken an image at each phase of the eclipse for the photo montage, I used a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens with a 2x tele converter attached,  making a focal length of 1280mm. Multiple images were captured and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.

This is my second eclipse in two weeks as I experienced the incredible Total Solar Eclipse on board the P&O Pacific Explorer on the 20th April at Exmouth in Western Australia….Wow, that was so amazing :-)

We are away camping at the moment at Lennox Heads in NSW and this was the view of the full moon rising.
It was just so gorgeous like a golden orb hanging in a deep purple sky.  

We are experiencing some incredible volcanic coloured skies that are just so pretty :-)
​
Looking to the western sky you can see the constellation of Orion going down and Venus to the lower right again in that beautiful dusty coloured sky. Images were taken with a Canon 70D camera a Tamron 18-400mm lens.

​I was so lucky to get a window seat on our flight back from Perth to Brisbane on the 22nd April 2023.
 
Looking out the window at sunset I saw this gorgeous view while we were at 30,000ft or 11,000 meters, you can still see those stunning colours from the volcanic aerosols in the atmosphere!
 
As it got darker, you could see a tiny 2 day old crescent Moon with the planet Venus above, it was a bit tricky to get the photo’s but I put a blanket over my head to try and get rid of the reflections from the down lights on the plane…. and it worked, the colours were very vivid…Amazing!
 
Images were taken with a Canon G7 x Mark11 camera on manual focus at infinity. I’m on our way back from the incredible Solar Eclipse Cruise on the P&O Pacific Explorer :-)

Yay! My husband and I are going on this wonderful cruise to see the eclipse and flying to Perth on the 16th April 2023. We’ll stay a night in Freemantle first before getting on the ship for a 9pm sailing on the 17th April 2023.
 
I’m a bit concerned about being on a moving surface like but I’m sure the ship will stop while the event is happening so we can capture our images. It’s a five-hour flight from one side of Australia to the other but how exciting!!!
 
Totality is only for 58 seconds so if anything happens…blink and you’ll miss it!
Is it worth all the money and trouble to go see it…you bet it is :-))
 
Please see the information on the cruise below; perhaps you may be able to make it too…
 
https://www.pocruises.com.au/cruises/solar-eclipse
 
This once-in-a-lifetime 5-night cruise is an opportunity to view a Hybrid Solar Eclipse that will track over the North West Cape of Western Australia, including Exmouth. Pacific Explorer will be in a prime position to catch a glimpse of the first Hybrid Solar Eclipse to be visible from Australia in 1000 years. Also known as the King of Eclipse’s, our unique vantage point will put us in place to observe the sun, moon and Earth’s discs aligning. Certainly an event not to be missed!

We have invited special presenter partners to entertain and educate you as we cruise up the coast. Professional astronomers from the Astronomical Society of Australia, will give lectures, Q&As and during networking sessions share their knowledge on eclipse and astronomy basics, cutting edge astronomical research occurring in Australia and other special topics. And of course there will be stargazing to explore the Southern sky and cultural knowledge.

​More information can be found at the main Western Australia Government website at:
https://ningalooeclipse.com/
 
https://ningalooeclipse.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Ningaloo-Eclipse-downloadable-booklet.pdf
 
Also at the Gravity Centre in Perth at:
https://gravitycentre.com.au/2023-exmouth-solar-eclipse/
https://gravitycentre.com.au/
​

On the 2nd February over twenty little budding astronomers came along to the Runaway Bay Library to learn all about our Amazing Solar System. 
 
The children had a lot of fun learning all about the planets. 
It was a joy to be back at the library with the Stardust kids, Noeleen :-)
 
Presented by Noeleen Lowndes
Member from the Southern Astronomical Society (Gold Coast)
https://www.sas.org.au

​~ Totality was from 8.16pm to 9.42pm ~
 
I’ve made up a photomontage of the lunar images that I took of the Total Eclipse of Moon on the evening of the 8th November 2022.
 
It was very cloudy to begin with so missed some of the beginning, the first image taken was when the Moon went into the Umbral at 7.11pm, this had to be a very quick shot as cloud came over the sky a few minutes after.
 
The next time it had cleared, was half way through the eclipse at 7.46pm. It looked like we were not going to see totality but by magic the sky started to clear and there was the eclipsed Moon in all its glory among the faint stars of Aries (The Ram).
 
It looked ever so pretty and the colour was just gorgeous, because I only had my camera and lens on a tripod I could only take a couple of shots at a time as the movement of the heavens is quite noticeable at high magnification.
 
I used a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter making a focal length of 1280mm. Because the eclipse was quite bright I only had to use a 1 second exposure with ISO 2000 to capture a pretty picture.
 
Please see below the single image with all the setting times that I used, it was so lucky that the sky cleared in time to see this beautiful wonder of the night sky :-)

1st image taken at 7.11pm (AEST) Umbral Eclipse has begun.
​Five images captured with exposure time of 1/250th second and ISO 160, stacked in RegiStax6.

2nd Image taken midway into eclipse at 7.46pm with exposure time of 1/250th second and ISO 200.
Five images captured and stacked in RegiStax6.

3rd Image taken at Totality at 9.06pm with planet Uranus only 1.5 degrees away, exposure time of 1 second and ISO 2000, five images were captured and stacked in RegiStax6, processed in PS CS4.

4th images taken at 10pm with the Moon moving out of the Earths shadow and sunlight returning on NW limb at 10pm with exposure time of 2 seconds and ISO 500.
​You can still see the gorgeous orange red colour on the surface with this longer exposure.

 5th Image was taken at 10.07 pm that showed a lot of the Moon still in the Earths shadow, with exposure time of 1/30th second and ISO 400.
 
At 10.10pm cloud came over the whole sky and that was the end of seeing more of the Eclipse
​that ended at 11.58pm.

~ Lunar Eclipse with Uranus on the ecliptic ~

​​We had very cloudy skies right up to the time of totality and then the sky cleared for a stunning view of the Total Eclipse of the Moon; this was a particularly pretty eclipse because of the field of stars surrounding the deep red Moon with the bluish planet Uranus only 1.5 degrees away.
 
Images were taken with just a Canon 70D camera and Tamron18-400mm lens and 2x teleconverter, making a focal length of 1280mm on a static camera tripod.

Five images were captured with 1-second exposures, ISO 2000 and stacked in Registax6 processed in PS.