Hi Robert,
Well, I guess there is some kind of a story behind almost any picture.
Our passion with astronomy started when my daughter asked if we can find aliens three years ago, she was four at that time. So we got a department store Newtonian telescope and a pair of binoculars. When I looked at Venus and Saturn I knew there was no coming back.The small Newtonian telescope made room for a Dobsonian, then a larger one and again... I am not sure what aperture is needed to find those aliens but we keep trying.
During a Border Stargaze Astrofest last year (held near Albury on the border of New South Wales and Victoria) I borrowed a tripod and pointed my DSLR at the sky and that added another dimension to my hobby. We are lucky in Australia and have access to true dark skies and amazing landscapes not too far away from the major cities and I aim to show familiar landscapes under the night skies.
I always plan my night photography a few days or even weeks ahead and try to go out every new moon if the weather permits. In June I wanted to get Moon and Venus conjunction above the ocean to capture the water-reflected light path from both, so that was the prime objective for the trip to Cape Schanck. Here are two images from the same night at the Cape:
Moon, Venus and Lighthouse
Moon and Venus light path
We like to go there with our family in summer and I know the place reasonably well. After taking the Moon shots I walked down to the ocean and tried to find the right angle, which took a while and I waited for the Milky Way centre to rise a bit higher. The taller rocks were lit by the lighthouse but the beach wasn't and the image looked unbalanced. So I experimented with light-painting it using an ordinary torch. With that image, I took eight 30-second exposures whilst painting with the torch to make the effect smooth and subtle. I then stacked the 8 images together and used a single 30-second exposure of the sky. Other than stacking the foreground images I did not need to post-process it much because the skies were quite dark and the red-coloured glow was a bonus. I had to finish early though as the dew was forming too fast on the lens near the ocean.
I am quite happy with the result and my family liked it. I usually post my images on the Australian astronomy forum
IceInSpace and this image got positive feedback, so I knew it was a good one.
Thank you so much for choosing it to display on the APOD page and showing to so many people in the world!
Cheers,
Alex
The Milky Way Over Pulpit Rock
