Time again to post some of my recent photos. I really should try to do this more often.

Macro of a fly on a cabbage:

Macro of a blue-banded bee:

Like shags on a rock. Some cormorants at Kaikoura in NZ:

Some fly pr0n:

M45 The Pleiades:

NGC6334 Cat's Paw Nebula:

Jupiter - my first attempt at a planet:

Jupiter and Neptune are very close at the moment. I wanted to get a shot of them together. Last night I was doing some testing of my setup, so took the opportunity.

Click the shot below for labelled image

Another new moon on the weekend and clear skies, so went to another dark site near Boonah. Met some other astrophotographers and had a great night. Still learning little bits and pieces, but am getting there.

NGC3372 Eta Carinae Nebula

M20 Trifid Nebula and M8 Lagoon Nebula

On the weekend we went out to my first "dark site" at Leyburn to do some astrophotography. I have been absolutely jumping out of my skin for an opportunity like that. Since getting my telescope the weather has been cloudy most of the time, or full moon and light pollution from the city ruining the darkness for imaging.

Had been checking the weather reports all week and was supposed to be clear skies. Moon was near new. Everything fell into place. Awesome.

So here are some images I took.

M42 Orion Nebula

M83 Southern Pinwheel Galaxy

Comet Lulin

Been looking around for weather and cloud forecast websites for planning my astrophotography sessions. Came across some pretty cool ones today.

APanel is a graphical forecast updated 4 times a day. It works for any location. You can either put in city names or latitude and longitude.

Astroforecast shows just the night-time cloud forecast. Bit more concise.