Phil Hart - Under the Stars

Sunday 3rd March

I went back down to Cape Schanck again, but this time rather than heading down to the lighthouse, I stopped on the side of the road looking out over a farm (that I had scoped out on Google Streetview). This is the kind of image I was hoping to capture - I love it when a plan comes together!

Comet C/2011 L4 Panstarrs, Sunday 3rd March 2013
Five frame panorama, Canon 6D DSLR
300mm lens, 3 secs, f4, ISO800
Click for larger size

I've just come back from three nights running a Night Sky Photography Workshop at Lake Eppalock, and while I was supposed to be instructing, I was also very keen to capture some images of Comet Lemmon (and Comet Panstarrs) over the weekend.

The weather continued hot and dry like it has all this Victorian summer, and so while we had largely clear skies at night we were battling a lot of smoke haze (and some high cloud) that made the sky low in the south quite murky (at best) on Friday and Saturday nights. The night of Sunday 17th February 2013 was considerably better, and so I was very pleased to be able to capture this image.

Takahashi Epsilon 160 (530mm, f3.3) and Canon/Astro 40D, 100 * 1 minute exposures, ISO1600

It's been four years since my first amazing photographic experience with bioluminescence in the Gippsland Lakes, but it has finally made another appearance. These images were taken between the 11th and 16th January 2013, while I was again a Program Director for Camp Cooinda, a voluntary organisation running summer camps for teenagers down at the Lakes.

Even though this total solar eclipse was 3000km from Melbourne, it was still on home territory which meant it was an opportunity too good to miss. So with some friends in the Astronomical Society of Victoria (ASV), I arranged to have a serious amount of astrophotography gear freighted up to Queensland several weeks in advance.

With the eclipse occurring on the morning of Wednesday 14th November, we arrived in Port Douglas the weekend beforehand, just as a big, wet and cloudy weather trough moved through. But the weather settled back into a more normal easterly pattern in the following days, which meant that on eclipse day there was likely be partly cloudy conditions on the coast but good prospects of clear skies inland. So Monday was spent scouting locations inland with James McHugh from the ASV and Russell and Julieanne from Adobe.

After dinner for my partner Karen's birthday on the Tuesday evening, I headed to our chosen site on the Mulligan Highway together with my dad who was keen enough to increase his chances of seeing his first eclipse to sacrifice the comfortable bed in our beach house accommodation.

It's been a long learning curve, but I'm pleased to have finally released my second timelapse video from my 'Aurora Adventures in the Yukon' earlier this year.

The last few nights have held a lovely conjunction with Mars, Saturn and the bright star Spica forming a striking triangle in the evening sky.

Although Mars and Saturn are not the brightest planets, I was keen to capture an image that would show the colour variation between the orange-red of Mars, pale yellow of Saturn and the brilliant blue of Spica. Hope you like this image I captured as the three set behind some eucalyptus (gum) trees on the evening of Sunday 12th August, while I was running a workshop on the shores of Lake Eppalock, in central Victoria, Australia.

Canon 5D mkII, Pentax 300mm lens
20 minute exposure, f5.6, ISO100

After nine weeks in the Yukon earlier this year to photograph the Northern Lights, followed by some extended travels, I finally returned home to the pleasant surprise of winning the overall David Malin Award at the 2012 CWAS Astrofest for an image taken from very close to home, in Williamstown near the centre of Melbourne, Australia.

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These two images of Mt Niles were captured from the Scott Duncan Memorial Hut, on the last and coldest night of the Wapta Traverse Ski Trek in the Canadian Rockies which I did with Yamnuska Mountain Adventures in April 2012.

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