The week started with some morning photography of the Moon, Mercury, Jupiter and Mars Conjunction, and got busier from there. My photos have received a great deal of positive feedback throughout the week for which I am really humbled and grateful.

Excitement peaked again yesterday as I was fortunate enough to have my image chosen to be Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on the 26th February, which always brings a huge influx of visitors to the site.  Just over 24 hours later (since APOD published the picture), over 5,000 people have visited mikesalway.com.au, and the APOD link was also submitted to Digg where it now has over 1200 diggs.  

Whenever I submit an image for APOD, you always want it to be chosen and published, but neverexpect it. It’s always a thrill, and very exciting, to receive an email reply after so many times of receiving no reply

This makes my 5th image published on APOD, and interestingly, my first 2 APOD’s (#1, #2)were hi-res images of Jupiter, but my last 3 (#3, #4, #5) have been of conjunctions with nothing more than an entry level DSLR, a cheap Sigma lens and a tripod.

I do put a lot of effort into these shots and sometimes I’m planning them out days or weeks before hand. I guess I’ve been lucky to have captured these beautiful events with the sky putting on a special show. It is really nice, and really rewarding when the effort is recognised. It makes it all worthwhile.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me and given such great feedback on my photography.

Unfortunately I was clouded out during the 3rd (out of 4 for this year) transit of Titan across Saturn on the night of the 24th of Feb.

Fortunately though, a few friends of mine got clear skies and reasonable seeing to be able to capture this rare event.

Titan Transit by Anthony Welsey

The image above is by Anthony Wesley from Canberra, and the dark spot is Titan, not the shadow! The image was taken with his 13.1″ scope (LEXX) and the Dragonfly2 PGR camera. He captured for 60 seconds per channel, at 25fps in R and G, 20fps in B. Anthony stacked and processed the best 1000 frames from each channel as chosen by ninox.

Continue reading to see Trevor’s fantastic images and a long animation showing Titan and its shadow transit across the planet.

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In the From the Vault series, I feature an older image which hasn’t been seen here before and I talk about the capture and processing and hopefully highlight why this image is special to me.

The feature image in From the Vault this week is a portrait of Jupiter and the Galilean Moons, the Jovian system in high resolution. Captured on May 11th 2007, this was one of my most ambitious projects of that year, and took hours to capture and many many more hours in processing. It shows Jupiter with her 4 Galilean moons, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede and Io all at the same scale, in their correct positions at the time of capture.

It’s a good time for this image to be featured again, in the International Year of Astronomy – 400 years since Galileo first used a telescope to observe Jupiter’s Moons.

Jupiter and the Galilean Moons (click for full size)

I took 6 images to create an animation, showing the rotation of Jupiter and the dance of Jupiter’s Moons as they orbit the gas giant. Please continue reading to read more about this image, and to see the animation.

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Pick a day when you don’t want it to be cloudy.. any day.. well, last night/this morning was that day for me. 

A day when 3 important and interesting celestial events were due to occur:

1. The third transit of Titan across Saturn (on the night of the 24th February)
2. Comet Lulin closest approach to Earth, and only 2 degrees away from Saturn (on the night of the 24th February)
3. Jupiter, Mercury and Mars conjunction in the pre-dawn sky (on the morning of the 25th February)

.. and I wasn’t able to observe or photograph any of them due to clouds all night and all morning this morning.

I did feel more fortunate then, that I was able to capture the lovely Photos of the Moon, Mercury, Jupiter and Mars Conjunction on February 23rd.

Once some of the images from the Titan Transit and the conjunction from this morning start rolling in on IceInSpace and other places, I’ll post some links so we can all get to see them.

For ages last night I sat in bed wondering where to go to photograph this marvellous sight… wondering if it would be cloudy, would it be clear, would the skies provide the same dramatic scenery as I was presented for the Smiley Face Conjunction, would I remember the spare batteries, my tripod, the remote switch, would the alarm wake me up or would I sleep through it?!

Luckily, everything came together for a beautiful morning of photography and I was able to capture some stunning images of the Moon, Jupiter, Mercury and Mars conjunction. 

Moon, Mercury, Jupiter and Mars Conjunction at Dawn

The image above is my favourite from the session, and was taken with the Canon 20D and Sigma 17-70mm lens @ 33mm, f/5.6, 2.0s exposure @ ISO800.

Please continue reading below to see more photos of the conjunction gracing the lovely morning skies.

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In the From the Vault series, I feature an older image which hasn’t been seen here before and I talk about the capture and processing and hopefully highlight why this image is special to me.

The feature image in From the Vault this week is titled Long Jetty Sunset and has long been one of my favourite sunset images. You know those days when you’re out to photograph a sunrise or a sunset, and the clouds are just right.. the water is just right.. the reflections are just right, and everything is how you imagined it would be.

Long Jetty Sunset

The old crusty boat filled with seaweed, the family walking along the wharf, the lovely golden reflections off the hand rail and the beautiful sunset colours and clouds reflecting off the water really make this image stand out to me.

Please read on to learn more about this image and to see more photos from the session.

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Back in January 2008, I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a DMK41AF02 from Astronomy Cameras. It’s a monochrome webcam with a 1/2″ CCD that can capture at 15fps in 1280×960 pixel resolution – just perfect for lunar astrophotography where a large field of view really matters.

The images below were captured on the 27th January 2008 in average seeing, but weren’t processed until now due to limitations in Registax 4. The large frame size produced by the DMK41AF02 meant that a 2 minute AVI was over 2 gigabytes in size (using the Y800 codec), and Registax 4 just couldn’t load those large files.

Luckily though, in recent months I’ve been on the Registax 5 beta-testing program (it’s due for release any week now!) and so I’ve been able to use Registax 5 to process these AVI’s, as it handles large file sizes without a problem.

It was worth the wait – the large field of view combined with a mosaic of several frames has allowed me to capture some larger than normal patches of the moon in high-resolution, when compared with the DMK21AU04 which has 640×480 pixel resolution.

Theophilus and Cyrillus - 2 frame mosaic. Click image for full-size version.

Please continue reading to see more images from the session and for more information and a review of the DMK41AF02 in practise.

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On the 25th January, my son Jacob and I went to watch our first A-League football (soccer) match between the Central Coast Mariners and the Melbourne Victory at the Central Coast Bluetongue Stadium. We’d never been to see a live game before so we were both excited!

The result of the game wasn’t really going to change the shape of the finals series as both teams had already guaranteed their spot in the final 4. Still, it was a great game to watch although the Central Coast went down 1-0, with Melbourne scoring a goal in about the 79th minute.

I took my camera along to record some photos of the game. Hopefully they portray the mood and atmosphere of the event. All shots taken with the Canon 20D. Wide shots were captured with the Sigma 17-70mm lens and close-ups were with the stock 75-300mm lens.

Central Coast Stadium

Please continue reading to see more photos from the game.

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Just a quick post as I get through my backlog of photos..

I took these a couple of weeks ago after cutting down a tree in my backyard. Found lots of tiny critters on it, including these spiders. One of them had a little moth that he/she was nibbling on.

Canon 20D + Sigma 17-70mm at the 70mm macro end.

Cute Little Spider eating a cute little moth

Tiny Spider

Thanks for looking.

Jupiter is my favourite planet to take photos of, so it’s getting to the exciting time of the year now when Jupiter is gracing our morning skies again and will soon be high enough to point my telescope at and start capturing images.

It’s currently at about 10° altitude at approx 6am from mid-southern latitudes, and gets higher each day. In 1 months time, it will be at 27° altitude at 6am – still very low, but certainly high enough to capture some early season images and see what shape the GRS and Red Jr (Oval BA) take this year.

Jupiter + Callisto

The image above was captured in late May 2008, and shows the GRS, Oval BA and the Little Red Spot (LRS) which was destroyed by its encounter with the GRS in early July.

Continue reading for a preview of Jupiter season 2009!

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