Galaxy Quest

Well, here we are, into August already! What a difference eight months can make. The health challenges that I faced earlier in the year and throughout last year feel further and further in the rear view mirror each day. Infact, several areas in my life that were causing me some grief, have now been put behind me and it's been nice to have some clean air in front of me to get back to growing and developing as a photographer.

For those who have been following me for some time would know, I've always been partial to taking photos at the beach. But one of my other passions is capturing the night sky, especially the Milky Way. There's so much to learn about when you set out to capture the night sky. Camera settings, focusing, composition, not mention the editing process to bring out the detail that hovers magically above us all each night. It's a steep curve when starting out.

18 months ago, I purchased a celestial tracker, the Sky Watcher - Star Adventurer 2i. Even getting this thing out of the box and put together took some time and a couple of You Tube videos. I really wanted to make last year about taking my astro photography to another level. It wasn't to be, with illness and other life things getting in the way, I just didn't have the capacity to spend the time and energy required to commit to this genre of photography.

Although I ventured out on a few nighttime adventures, I really only captured a handful of night sky images using 30 second exposures, or less. Not to say that these weren't images that I wasn't proud of, I was, but I had it in my head that I wanted to take things to a whole other level.

I did manage to get the tracker out on one occasion, heading up to Mount Crawford Forest with a couple of mates. I managed to obtain a really good polar alignment (more about that later) and ended up with what at the time was, my most detailed image of the Milky Way.

My first decent attempt at a tracked Milky Way image

I learnt an awful lot from this image, mainly two points: Obtaining polar alignment in the Southern Hemisphere is HARD! Blending your night sky into your foreground shot creates a level of frustration that I've not experienced before! There was so much to be learnt and put into practice.

The internet can really be a photographer's best friend. Once I made the decision that 2025 was going to be the year that I made my leap forward in the field of Astro Photography, I set out to learn as much as possible.

Queue the wonderful world of You Tube.

Photographers like Richard Tatti have made some wonderfully helpful tutorial video's around how to set yourself up to capture the night sky.

One of the local Astro Photographers I greatly admire, Eric Wilkes has some fantastic blog material on his website which was also super helpful in getting my bearings.

To get me started, I purchased a phone mount from a great New Zealand business called Skylabs. I had watched several video's about using these phone mounts to achieve much quicker and easier polar alignment, I figured I'd give that a go!

Rewinding just a little bit. If you're unfamiliar with astro photography, you may be asking yourself what is this 'Polar Alignment' he keeps mentioning? Well, in Lamens terms, it's commonly accepted that the planet Earth spins, right? Thats why we have a dawn, day, dusk and night essentially. It's also somewhat common to understand that the world is shaped like a globe, right? (don't even get me started on the Flat Earthers).

So Polar Alignment is the location in which the axis of the Earth spins, from East to West. The problem is, especially in the Southern Hemisphere is that you can't exactly see where this location in the stars is! If you've ever tried capturing star trails with your camera and had it pointed roughly in a Southerly direction, you would've noticed the stars all rotating around a central point (as seen below). This is the southern celestial pole.

The South Celestial Pole is located at the central point of the star rotations.

In order to capture longer exposures of the night sky, the Star Adventurer will turn in sequence with the Earth, locking the stars in place and allowing for significant detail to be captured. The issue, however, is this. You must get your alignment fairly accurate to prevent trailing in your stars. Many cold evenings were spent in the backyard trying to perfect this procedure which requires the following:

* Level Tripod

* Correct elevation of your tracker (approximately 34 degrees in Adelaide)

* Correct alignment to the south celestial pole (different to magnetic south)

* The ability to do a lot of this in the dark under torch light!

Many of those cold nights spent in the back yard trying to perfect this procedure ended in frustration! But eventually I managed to achieve alignment good enough to capture 120 second exposures at 135mm. This was enough to capture nebula, even from my heavily light polluted back yard!

We're blessed to have a wonderfully collaborative photography community in Adelaide, for the most part anyway. A couple of astro photographers that I really admire, Eric Wilkes and Simon Deluca-Cardillo were incredibly helpful in sharing their knowledge which gave me some confidence to head out into the field and give this another shot.

I met up with Simon, along with my friend Adam at the amazing Mannum Falls. Simon was well acquainted with the area and was only too happy to show us around some of the ideal locations to shoot before assisting us with polar alignment.

To my surprise, he used a compass! Not his smart phone with the fancy adaptor! It's not something you see too many people carrying around in this digital day and age, a compass.

Sometimes simple just works better.

Simon was able to obtain a fantastic alignment for me while talking me through his process, and I managed some wonderful long exposures of the Milky Way core as it lifted above the horizon.

It was a fantastic night of chatting, collaborating and learning which resulted in some of my favorite Astro images to date. In addition, it gave me the knowledge and confidence to complete satisfactory polar alignment on my own.

Sometimes, seeking the assistance of those who have already walked the path can really speed up your learning and maintain the passion which can quickly disappear if you just can't get things right.

This is one of my images from that cold night up at Mannum Falls.

'Mannum Skies' - Shot with Canon EOS R and Star Adventurer 2i

It's really easy with photography to start something and never finish it! Buying that new device, or lens, or piece of kit but never investing the time and effort needed to understand it fully. Frustration, or results that you're not overly happy with can hamper your progress if you let them.

I've always said that one of the reasons I love photography, is that we are all students.

There is always something to learn!

So, if you've been thinking about challenging yourself with an area of photography, get to it!

Make it your own and enjoy the learning process. As frustrating as it can be, the sense of accomplishment and the resulting images after learning something new make the whole process worthwhile.

A couple of images captured after this learning experience with my Star Adventurer 2i...

Loch Luna Stars

Mount Crawford Skies

Earth & Sky - Myponga Beach