Ok, some others may disagree with that, but I’m pleased to announce that I was kindly awarded the Erwin Van Der Velden memorial trophy for best widefield Astro photo for the second time this Astrofest.
I’m very happy that this massive panorama of 42 shots, somewhat cut down, won. The outback town in deepest Qld that it was taken is called Boulia and is a most exceptionally remote place to visit!
I’m quite sure that the entire crew aboard the International Space Station were looking down at a bunch of Astro-geeks in a vacant block near the centre of Yarraman, Queensland when we captured their home crossing the face of the sun. I can only assume they were as excited as us looking up!
OK, I had a daft idea yesterday. It struck me that all planets, dwarf included, are huddled on this side of the sun and potentially visible at some point during the night.
So on Brisbane’s coldest night of the year so far, I pulled an all-nighter.
I did plan to do a nice wide field observatory shot for “Earth” but at 5am I was just too knackered so you’re stuck with a selfie which is all I could manage!
I do take a lot of star-trails photos!
Not only do I like the dramatic effect of the trails themselves, but there is a certain mystery in the end result caused by stray light from unexpected sources. This photo was no exception with extra drama being added by the road-trains crossing the Nullarbor Plain 24/7. Taken on the WA/SA border over four hours, this image really captures the spectacular landscape of the area and how humans have impacted it.
Tucked away in outback Western Australia is a very bizarre but ultimately engaging art installation by the British artist Anthony Gormley. Over 50 locals from the town of Menzies stripped naked to be scanned and used ad the basis of these weird figures scattered across Lake Ballard.
Of course, I braved freezing conditions to photograph them at night – with decidedly more clothing on than they!
Spoiler Alert: The moon won!
And occultation of a bright star by the moon is a rare sight indeed. Australasians were treated to a tussle with Regulus on the 4th of May and I was lucky to have perfect conditions in Woomera, South Australia where I found my self three months into a 12 month adventure around Oz.
Armed with my trusty portable occultation timing kit and a modified 60mm binocular objective I was able to record the event. Of course, the view was much nicer ‘live’ through an unmodified set of Bino’s!
There is no greater honour, than to be judged by your friends and fellow Qld astronomers. My Nightscape “Reach for the Stars” won the Erwin van der Velden Memorial Trophy for Non-Telescope Astrophotography 2016 at Queensland Astrofest. Here’s how it was done:
In a lovely lazy Sunday, so it seems only right to photograph the easiest celestial target in the sky! Taken with a Lunt 50mm Double stacked solar telescope which sits on top of my main observatory telescope for days such as today 🙂
Out intrepid team of Astronomers recently travelled to the Queensland Outback to look for evidence that the circular feature that I identified in 2013 using Google Earth is a meteorite impact site and not just a hole in the ground!
That’s Pranvera Hyseni, Rob Black and myself weeding out meteor-rights from Meteor-wrongs over lunch.
So is it or isn’t it? Well we think it is, but it’s not as easy as that – to be formally recognised there needs to be a published peer reviewed scientific paper confirming it and that isn’t going to happen in a hurry! So in the mean time here is my write up in progress: http://shadowchaser.com.au/crater-bradshaw/
A star trails image, I just can’t do enough of them, but this time using a telephoto lens at 150mm.
I’d been sat on the beach looking at the island a kilometre out and decided it may be nice to frame it up and see if I could capture the stars emerging from atmospheric extinction. When I went back on the beach later that evening, there was a fair bit of cloud about and I thought that I would get nothing of merit. I grabbed 40 mins of data anyway (There are a lot worse things to do that to lay on a beach watching the stars after all).
What came out was this shot. I don’t know why, but it’s my favourite to date – just something about the clouds and the merged wave tops being in harmony, and where did that lilac sky come from?! Other than stacking, and some gentle adjustments, it’s how it came off the camera. 
