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Geostationary Satellite Orbit Insertion Burn
12 April 2024: This shows a satellite undertaking an orbital insertion burn to place itself into geostationary orbit.
Lightning Sprite #4
14 January 2021: This is the fourth night that I've managed to capture a lightning sprite as part of a timelapse sequence. The cloud / lightning / sprite was over the Central
Coast.
Edited from Wikipedia: Sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, or cumulonimbus, giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. They are usually triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground. Sprites appear as luminous reddish-orange flashes. They often occur in clusters above the troposphere at an altitude range of 50–90 km. Sporadic visual reports of sprites go back at least to 1886 but they were first photographed in 1989.
Lightning Sprite #3
20 November 2020: This is the third night that I've managed to capture a lightning sprite as part of a timelapse sequence. The cloud / lightning / sprite was over the Central Coast.
Edited from Wikipedia: Sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, or cumulonimbus, giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. They are usually triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground. Sprites appear as luminous reddish-orange flashes. They often occur in clusters above the troposphere at an altitude range of 50–90 km. Sporadic visual reports of sprites go back at least to 1886 but they were first photographed in 1989.
Comet Neowise
Comet Neowise (C/2020 F3) was a spectacular comet for those in the northern hemisphere. But only after it had faded significantly in late July had it finally travelled south enough to be visible for those of us in the southern hemisphere.
This video shows the "nightly" progression of the comet across the southern sky and is compiled from (generally) the first start up image each night from my timelapse365.com project from 29 July to 13 August 2020.
There are a number of nights that were missed due to inclement weather (which is why the "smooth" movement jumps), and the image from 10 August is from about 5 minutes later than it should have been due to cloud, which is why the comet seems out of place too far to the left.
1,000 Meteors
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) - 12 September 2020
Category Winner - Animated Sequences Scientific - David Malin Awards 2020
This video, at 15 frames per second, presents a diverse range of 1,000+ meteors (plus a lightning sprite) selected from 372 nights of imaging. It is organised by local sidereal time and therefore also displays all of the northern night sky constellations as seen over a full 12 month period. All frames are processed identically to show the dramatically varying sky conditions in colour, brightness and seeing conditions.
A few things to keep an eye out for:
Midnight Montage
Highly Commended - Widefield - David Malin Awards 2020 *
This montage represents the discrete images generated at midnight AEST between 5 April 2019 through 13 August 2020 shot every night, precipitation permitting, on a custom developed remotely controlled dark sky wide field time lapse system. 386 midnight images were captured across 497 total nights (77.6%).
Keogram Montage
Highly Commended - Widefield - David Malin Awards 2020 *
A keogram is a time-versus-latitude plot created from the individual images captured during the night and are a good method of summarising each night, with cloud and changing sky conditions apparent.
Bushfire Skies
Highly Commended - Nightscapes - David Malin Awards 2020
The raging summer bushfires came uncomfortably close turning the sky red as the fires lit up cloud.
Dancing Clouds
Honorable Mention - Animated Sequences Aesthetic - David Malin Awards 2020
Spacecraft
Honorable Mention - Animated Sequences Scientific - David Malin Awards 2020
This video is a compilation of some interesting spacecraft events captured in the night sky and includes:
Cosmic Ray
Highly Commended - Deep Sky - David Malin Awards 2020
The image shows (what is most likely) a cosmic ray over the background sea of noise captured by a DSLR image sensor. Whilst normal processing is designed to reject and/or minimise such sources of noise, this image has been processed to preserve these cosmic events.
2,283 x ISO 100 30 second exposure blank frames were shot with a Canon 5D Mark III (RAW) with the lens cap on in a darkened room. The typical debayering process was bypassed and the images converted to a linear RGB image in Pixinsight. A “Max” integration and “Average” integration of all frames was undertaken, with the “Max” integration treated as a light frame, and the “Average” integration as a dark frame and subtracted in order to remove persistent hot pixels. The resulting frame was then examined to identify extreme pixel values (at or near saturation), with two such cluster of pixels identified. Identification of the individual frame with the same extreme pixel values was undertaken to ensure that the extreme cluster of pixel values were in a single frame and not an artefact of the “Max” integration across multiple frames. Both identified cluster of pixels were traced to discrete frames suggestive of a single source event. The image presented is one of those frames, with an auto stretch applied to display the cosmic ray signal above the random sensor noise and shows the RGGB bayer colour filter pattern on the sensor.
Bolivar Peninsular Lighthouse
Lightning Sprite #2
26 February 2020: This is the second night that I've managed to capture a lightning sprite as part of a timelapse sequence. The sprite was over the Gunnedah / Coonanaranram /
Narrabri area.
Edited from Wikipedia: Sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, or cumulonimbus, giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. They are usually triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground. Sprites appear as luminous reddish-orange flashes. They often occur in clusters above the troposphere at an altitude range of 50–90 km. Sporadic visual reports of sprites go back at least to 1886 but they were first photographed in 1989.
Persistent Meteor Train
Capertee Valley
Honorable Mention - Animated Sequences Aesthetic - David Malin Awards 2018
Southern Celestial Pole around a Fleurs Radio Telescope
Honorable Mention - Wide-field - David Malin Awards 2018
Sprite and Orion
Honorable Mention - Wide-field - David Malin Awards 2018
Capertee Fireball
Highly Commended - Wide-field - David Malin Awards 2018
This meteor was captured at Capertee Valley and generated a meteor train that was persistent for over 1 hour.
Great American Total Solar Eclipse 2017
Milky Way Orb
Dark Skies of Sydney
18 May 2018
Wiruna Fireball - 2016
This was by far the biggest fireball I have ever seen, just after 9pm high in the sky to the North East on 9 October 2015 from the ASNSW's Wiruna dark sky property at Ilford, NSW.
Not only did I get to witness the fireball visually, I had a DSLR shooting a time-lapse pointed in that direction which captured the fireball almost perfectly framed - the photo is uncropped.
The photo is a composite of two 30 second exposures, with the gap between the two segments partially real and partially due to the short gap between the two photos.
About four minutes after witnessing the fireball and had all sat down from our excitement, we heard a sonic boom. Based on the propagation speed of sound, this would have placed the explosion at around 80km.
Canon 5D Mark III, Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 2500, 2 x 30 sec exposure, ISO 2500, f/2.8 - "Lighten" blend in Photoshop
Riverina Skies
Honorable Mention - Animated Sequences Aesthetic - David Malin Awards 2015
The Riverina area is one of the most productive agricultural areas in NSW with crops including canola and wheat. This sequence captures a variety of agricultural scenes under the Riverina night skies.
Footage is from a variety of cameras including Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 5D Mark III, Sony A7S with Samyang 24mm f1/4 and Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lenses.
Panning motion on some footage via Alpine Labs Radian.
Point Perpendicular
Honorable Mention - Animated Sequences Aesthetic - David Malin Awards 2015
The objective was to over exaggerate the size of the rising full moon and this was achieved by including a "foreground" object, the Point Perpendicular lighthouse, which was approximately 9.9km away across Jervis Bay from the calculated position at Hyams Beach, thus reducing its relative size.
The planning for the sequence highlighted to me the difficulty for these types of "rising" alignments - my planned calculated position was just 80m further north but was blocked by thick scrub and bush - this location would have seen the graze of the cliff and lighthouse as I had originally envisaged.
Canon 7D with Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM and Canon 5D Mark III with Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens
Huntsman Dark Nebula
Highly Commended - Wide Field - David Malin Awards 2015
A huntsman spider climbed up the tripod and camera and settled motionless on the camera lens for approximately 2 minutes during an unattended timelapse sequence and has cast a new spider shaped “dark nebula” over the Milky Way.
Sony A7 with Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC, 30 sec @ f/2.8
ISS shadow transit of full moon
4 May 2015
The International Space Station transits the full moon from approximately 11 o’clock to 2 o’clock. The ISS is 109m x 73m and was shot at a distance of 1,236km along a narrow (12km) path that passed through the Sydney CBD. It traversed the moon in under 1.5 seconds and was completely unsighted as it was in earths shadow at the time, so it was shot solely based on predicted time.
Canon SX60HS point and shoot camera - video 1080p 60fps - 1365mm equivalent focal length, Canon 7D Mark II DSLR with Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM - 640mm equivalent focal length
Kalaya
Honorable Mention - Animated Sequences Aesthetic - David Malin Awards 2014
Kalaya is an aboriginal word for Emu.
For the past few years, I have envisaged shooting the Milky Way, and specifically the aboriginal “Emu”, rising above Uluru and Kata Tjuta - a blending of iconic ancient aboriginal landscape with ancient skies. In May 2014 I finally had the opportunity.
The Directors Edition is the footage at normal speed, whilst the David Malin Awards version has sections of footage sped up to meet the two minute time limit on entries.
Emu in the Sky
Fairweather Lane, Marrar
Tempus Velocitas is a compilation of astronomy timelapses that I've shot over the past few years.
This compilation represents in the order of 58,000 individual images spanning approximately 240 hours of the night sky all compressed down to 31 minutes.
There is also a shorter Tempus Velocitas Celeritas originally presented at the South Pacific Star Party 2014.
Baily Beads Montage
Total Solar Eclipse 2012 Holy Grail
Total Solar Eclipse 2012 Corona Explorer
Total Solar Eclipse 2012 Shadow Cone
Partial Solar Eclipse
ISS shadow transit of moon
4 April 2012
Comet Lovejoy & ISS - December 2011
Honorable Mention - Animated Sequences - David Malin Awards 2012