Dark Sky Observing outside Brisbane.
A week ago I bought a small telescope to indulge my childhood dreams of backyard astronomy. Within three nights, just sitting in my backyard, I’d seen Mars, Saturn, the Orion Nebula and managed to identify a handful of constellations and bright stars. Last night, I took advantage of the new moon and went out to Mt Pleasant with a friend to hunt down some more Deep Sky Objects.
We found a little cul-de-sac off Mt Brisbane Road (about an hour’s drive out of town) with almost no light pollution (certainly none that mattered) and unobstructed views of the sky from about 10° above the horizon. This, coupled with ZERO clouds meant for absolutely breathtaking views of the Milky Way. The Orion Nebula was easily found with the naked eye, as were the The Pleiades – viewing them through even my little ’scope showed them as a beautiful, bright cluster.
Over the next 4 hours or so we also viewed Mars and Saturn (the easiest planets to find), the Jewel Box (NGC 4755 is its official designation) and the Beehive Cluster (M44/NGC 2632, depending on which catalog you’re following. Some photos were taken by my Nikon D60 and 200mm zoom lens, but most of the night for me was spent hunting DSOs with my telescope, teaching Pat the basics of photography, or just looking up.
The photo at the top of this post is a long-ish exposure photograph of our setup under the sky. The red lines are the two of us poring over a book of star charts with red torches. The two bright, white star trails in the centre of the image are actually Alpha and Beta Centauri – the two brightest stars in Centaurus and better known as the two stars that point to the Southern Cross.
In: astronomy, photos · Tagged with: brisbane, night, photos, star trails, stargazing, stars, telescope
on February 13, 2010 at 8:00 am
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Great going out last night, that was fun. I like that long exposure. Thanks for teaching me some photo stuff. We’ll definitely have to do it again.
Those two pointer stars aren’t part of taurus. Taurus is right under orion, with the pleiades. Crux is on the other side of the sky.
on February 13, 2010 at 8:34 am
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You’re right! My mistake. Those two stars ARE the pointer stars Rigel Kent and Hadar, but they’re in CENtaurus, not Taurus. I’ve updated the post to reflect this.
Centaurs, bulls.. they’re all the same when you’re up very, very late the night before
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