Some shots from Hargraves Lookout

[AstroJason]

Hi all,

Headed out to Hargraves Lookout on Sunday night with some of the guys off here. Seemed like a pointless exercise as when I left Sydney at 2pm we were pretty much completely clouded over. Got to the site around 4pm and the clouds were breaking up. This made a cracker of a sunset, not to mention a clear night of over 6 hours observing time in what was one of the darkest skies I've been under.

Here are some of the better shots I took of the view and observing site. First real time I have shot in RAW and I can really see why it is the format of choice! So much more flexibility when it comes to processing the images. I feel I may have overcooked some of these but I am happy with the results.

All shots taken with my 8-16mm Sigma lens.

Cheers,

Jase

[iceman]

What a sunset! beautiful!

[Larryp]

Spectacular shots, Jason

[RobF]

Love 'em!
Glad to hear you got a great night too.

[AstroJason]

Thanks guys, really been trying to work on my processing skills. Still a lot to learn.

I purposely took some shots in the hope that when I got back home I would process them into panoramas. Never tried it before but I am pretty happy with the results.

[killswitch]

Wow these turned out great Jason.

What program did you use for the panorama?

[AstroJason]

Thanks Ed, I used the Photomerge feature in Photoshop CS6 to make the panoramas. Does a pretty good job at it, but it kind of makes it look like a curved shape so then use the Transform > Wrap tool to make the final image all straight and level.