The Milky Way from Melbourne, Australia

I just returned from a great trip back home to Melbourne, Australia. Dad and I spent a night out at a nearby mountain range called the Dandenongs, at a spot I had read about that is used by local astronomers. It was superb. The Milky Way was exceptionally bright with Scorpio right overhead! The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were easily visible, and I could clear see, naked eye, the Omega Centauri globular cluster. We explored the sky with his binoculars (very nice William Optics 10*50 model!) and I took a few snaps. This is the best Milky Way shot from that night out, which is a 20 second exposure taken at F4, ISO2500 with my Nikon D7000 and Sigma 10-20mm EXII HSM set to 10mm. The camera was pointing straight up!

Lunar Eclipse, Melbourne, June 16 2011

What luck! During my annual trip back home to Melbourne, Australia, we were blessed with a total lunar eclipse! Dad and I got up early, about 4:30am, to watch the proceedings. By the time, the Moon was already about 50% eclipsed, and it really didn't take long to get to totality. The image above is probably the best shot I took, for a series of about 200 or so. The image below was taken about 15 minutes prior to totality. Some high level clouds rolled in and started to obscure our view, plus I was shooting with a dewed zoom lens to was working against the odds a little at the time this specific shot was taken. It was very dark so the image above doesn't really reflect how dark it actually looked in the Western sky. It was great fun to be able to see this, though!