SKYWATCHER AUSTRALIA
Wow! 😍
Amazing shot from Kah-Wai Lin Photography with the Star Adventurer
California Nebula (NGC 1499).
California Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Perseus. It is named so because it resembles the outline of California. It is about 1,000 light years away from Earth, so what you are seeing now is the light emitted from about 1,000 years ago!
A great image from Scott Aspinall Photography with the Star Adventurer!
In July, I had a wonderful night under the stars with friends photographing the comet and the milky way. What I didn't realize at that moment was that, between work and cloud cover, I wouldn't see the stars again until November 19th. By that time, I had become so accustomed to cloud cover during a new moon cycle it was a shock when my 9-year-old exclaimed after supper, "Look, dad! There's the moon". In a state of disbelief, I looked up the cloud forecast for that night and my jaw dropped to the floor. Clear skies, no wind, reasonably low dew point and humidity were forecasted, indicating the potential for a great night of photography. My mind raced to find a wide-field composition of the Orion region in the archives, but couldn't think of anything. Then, this small group of trees came to mind. Having photographed the Rho Ophiuci Cloud Complex as a deepscape over them a couple of years back, I thought they might look very different after a good snowfall a couple weeks earlier under the brilliance of Orion. With astronomical dark around 7 PM local time, moonset at 9:24 PM (25% illuminated) and Orion arriving precisely to this position at 9:35 PM, I set out to the location with plans of capturing the landscape with the moon still in the sky, quickly polar aligning after it set, and beginning my Orion exposures directly at 9:30. Everything worked in my favour. The skies stayed clear, the landscape was even more snow-packed than I imagined and I came home with an image I absolutely love of my favourite constellation in the night sky. As a bonus, as I waited for my many sky exposures to finish up, I got to enjoy Aurora Borealis dancing in the north and a few stray meteors lighting up the sky.
EXIF
Shot with a Nikon D800e (unmodified) and a Tamron 70-200 2.8 @ 105mm with a Star Adventurer tracker
Foreground (8 exposures stacked for noise reduction. Captured under setting moonlight) - 90 seconds, f4, ISO800
Sky (36 exposures stacked for noise reduction. Captured from the same tripod location. Exposures started minutes after capturing the foreground and include 54 minutes of integration. In that time the Orion nebula rises from about 5 degrees elevation to 15 degrees) - 90 seconds, f4, ISO1600
Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker, Processed in Photoshop
Great review of the Sky-Watcher EQ6-R by AstroBackyard
Who’s owns one of these or plans to soon ?
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro Review | Tips, Features, & Example Images
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The Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro is a superb choice for deep astrophotography. Take a look at what I've accomplished with this affordable, intermediate-level GoTo mount.
@txmrae took this epic image of the Carina Nebula with the Esprit 120ED & EQ6R Pro
Tom says:
It’s distance from earth combined with the speed of light means that we are viewing this nebula 7500 years into the past. Perhaps a telescope is the closest we will ever get to a time machine.
This is what you get with only 6 minutes exposure on a stock camera from the darkest skies in the world.
Nikon Z6 (unmodified)
+ Skywatcher Esprit 120ED + Skywatcher EQ6R Pro
30s ISO 6400 x12 image stack.
Processed in photoshop.
"Listen" - From our ambassador Astrophotobear
The OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon was established in Australia to meet the needs for more reliable higher quality communications for the Apollo space program. The Carnarvon Tracking station was commissioned in 1964 and operated for 11 years and supported the Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs.
Exif Canon EOS R Sigma 35mm Sky-Watcher Star adventurer panorama head 35mm F2.0 ISO 1600 30s 180 image panorama Bortle 4 location looking into the heavier light pollution area
130/650 STAR DISCOVERY PRO Reflector