Jupiter Rising
There has been a stunning sight of Jupiter rising in the east these past few weeks. Just on dark, and rising right along with the core of the Milky Way, has been an incredibly bright “star” just below the scorpion, and beside Sagittarius. Just below Sagittarius is the ringed planet, Saturn. These shots were taken on June 6 from Binalong Bay, with the famous Bay of Fires tree in the foreground.
For these shots I enabled the Astro Tracer function (on my Pentax K1). It is a great feature and quite unique to the Pentax line up of cameras. For those who don’t know much about Pentax (I guess almost everyone reading this right!) the Astro Tracer utilisers the GPS to pinpoint the cameras location and rotate the cameras sensor in order to eliminate star trails. It is a very effective feature and one I have been getting a great deal of use from.
Winter is here in Tasmania, and the nights are very long with darkness falling not long after 5:00pm so it is a great time to get out and do some astrophotography. The Milky Way is bulging above the eastern horizon, so once the full moon has passed this week, there will be dark skies and more opportunities. Enjoy the dark!