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I think I'm starting to understand how to get the Seestar to find the moon during daylight and how to adjust the exposure to avoid blowing out highlights. In the meantime, here's a shot from the other night, a one minute video that I put through Autostakkert4 and Astrosurface before sending into...

I find it's a bit of a challenge to find the moon sometimes with this device, but when you land on it, it really looks impressive! This is a single JPEG frame, processed in Photoshop to bring out the colour. I hope to see if the FITS version has a bit more to it.

My new Seestar finally had a nighttime outing last night after several days of cloudy skies. This seems like a great device for folks who either just want to get shots of the night sky without too much travail, or who have very short nights (like we do in the southern New Zealand summer) but...

In late October the Waitaki Whitestone UNESCO Global Geopark was officially launched, though it was announced by UNESCO back in May. This is the first UNESCO Global Geopark in Oceania, so it's a rather big deal for the country and the local region. On the morning of the launch festival, the...

Every year close to Guy Fawkes' Day (5 November) the Weston School hosts a fireworks extravaganza as a fundraiser. This year it was met with light rain that did nothing to dampen the spirits of the 3000 or so people who came to watch (impressive for an area with a population just over 13,000)...

A lovely clear, albeit moon-lit night, greeted me on my birthday here in southern New Zealand, so I set up my ASIAIR to shoot two subjects with my 8" SCT, starting with M17, the Swan/Omega Nebula. This consists of 24 10-minute subs plus associated calibration frames.

I'm trying to clear out old junk from my astro drive, removing all the subs that are out of focus, contain nothing but clouds, etc. In the course of doing that, I discovered that I had several sessions of the Eta Carinae Nebula that were pretty much all centred on the same segment of the nebula...

My photo club organised an outing today to the Raptor Experience in Timaru, a rather newly established centre for the rehabilitation of injured birds of prey that welcomes visitors four days a week to help support their operations. It was an amazing experience, thanks in no small part to the...

The first celestial object I tried to photograph was the Horsehead Nebula. In hindsight, it was a silly choice, since it's not the easiest thing to capture, but it sure whetted my appetite for the hobby. I decided to try to shoot it again, and was a bit impatient to do so, since I really should...

With a string of clear skies this past week, combined with minimal moon and no wind, I kept the telescopes going much of the week. I used my 8" SCT to shoot the Tarantula Nebula, one of my favourite targets.

Last weekend (8-10 September) I attended my second-ever star party, at a camp in the forest 15 minutes from my house. I really enjoyed meeting the other participants (some of whom I already knew) and seeing their rigs, which included several of those new-fangled electronic all-in-one telescopes...

While I waited last night for the galaxy with the supernova to appear over my horizon, I had two hours or so with nothing better to do than shoot this lovely galaxy, known as the "Hamburger" Galaxy for some reason. Shot with my new 8" SCT it's a much larger FOV than on my old 80mm refractor.

I heard that last week astronomers discovered a supernova in the lovely galaxy NGC1097 in Fornax, so last night I aimed my scope that way to see if I could see it--and I could!

I should have been better prepared for this event, such as by getting myself down to my coastal property where I could have had a nicer foreground for the photo, but I had things going on and I didn't think of it until just before the moon was due to rise. As a result, this is about the best I...

Lastly, a few photos of Melbourne (and nearby area of Yarra Valley) in living colour.

I did not realise before getting there that Melbourne has such a vibrant graffiti culture, though it's fairly restricted to the laneways near Flinders Street Station.

I spent three nights in Melbourne last week on a rather impromptu getaway from the South Island of New Zealand to have a bit of a big-city break before things get busy again this summer. Here are some of my images.

I've been away from home for a few days visiting Melbourne, Australia (a first-time visit for me; photos will follow!) so I thought I'd keep my astro fingers nimble by downloading a set of data from TelescopeLive and process that while I was away from my own telescope. One advantage for me of...

Yes, it's another dust cloud/dark nebula. This one took a couple of days to capture (since my automatic focuser acted up on me for some reason on the first night) but I'm pleased with the result.

I haven't shot many dark nebulae in my astrophotography journey so far, so I figured I'd start to give it a try. Here is one from last night with my 8" Celestron SCT.