It's been a fun weekend for me in dark skies, but unfortunately last night/this morning was my last night of dark skies in Roma, QLD - but again they didn't fail to impress.
1. South-eastern sky panorama - one of my favourite shots from the trip. This single-shot scene has a very wide (114 degree diagonal) field of view, extending from Arcturus in the bottom-left corner and Saturn/Spica in the top-left corner, all the way to NGC 2516 globular cluster and LMC in the top-right corner and the SMC in the bottom-right corner.
In the scene, you can see the zodiacal light (triangle shaped light on the left), Milky Way galaxy, Scorpius rising (Antares is the yellow star between the zodiacal light and Milky Way), Comet Lovejoy, Crux/Coalsack Nebula, Lamba Cent Nebula, Eta Carina Nebula, airglow (it's not light pollution), and just the first hint of twilight.
I think the official term is that it's chokers of heaps good stuff
A larger, higher quality version is available
HERE.
Details: 1x 450 sec at 14 mm, f/4, ISO 1600 with a Canon 5DmkII and Canon 14 mm f/2.8L II mounted on an Astrotrac Travel System. Drift aligned using Orion Awesome Autoguider, but the exposure was unguided.
2. Comet Lovejoy and surrounding Milky Way mosaic. The comet's becoming quite dim now - visually, it was noticeably dimmer than the Milky Way and SMC/LMC, and even harder to spot than the Octans. As you may have noticed by my recent posts, I'm rapidly becoming a big fan of dark dust lanes
A larger, higher quality version is available
HERE.
This particular crop of the mosaic is only 8414x5609 pixels - the mosaic is closer to a circular rather than rectangular shape (lack of planning on my part).
Details: Mosaic made using Photoshop's Photomerge function with 10x 300 sec panels at 50 mm, f/2.8, ISO 800 with a Canon 5DmkII and Canon 50 mm f/1.2L mounted on the Astrotrac (unguided).