Photonic Acquisitions

04/28/2026

Terrestrial & celestial clouds. ☁️

This is a shot of some fluffy water next to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy located about 163,000 light-years away.

Even though it’s so far away, it can still be seen with the naked eye, which appears as a blurry grey blob in the sky, similar to the clouds.
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04/27/2026

Morning Milky Way reflections. 🌌

Our galaxy’s core is back for another season, if you’re up early enough. This was taken around 4:30am (ACST) which means the core was overhead (zenith).

But you don’t have to be up early for too much longer, the MW core will rise earlier and earlier each night as the year goes on and we move to a different location around the sun.

Space, the celestial calendar.
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04/20/2026

How cool! 😎

This stunning image of the Omega Centauri globular star cluster was taken by 6-year old Elara at Saturday's stargazing event at the Swan Reach Area School organised by the River Murray International Dark Sky Reserve.

A few minutes beforehand, Elara was amazed by the view of the star cluster in one of our visual telescopes. She asked how astronomers pointed telescopes to celestial objects.

So we gave Elara an iPad, located the cluster in the app's database, and she then pressed "Go". An 80mm imaging telescope quickly moved to and centred on the globular star cluster and started taking images and stacking them one on top the other. The final stacked image was then transferred to her father's phone as a souvenir of the night.

Well done Elara!


Photonic Acquisitions

04/19/2026

Dark Sky Star Party 🌌

Happy International Dark Sky Week!

Some snaps from last night’s “dark skies” event in Swan Reach.

The weather was perfect with the sky being clear, and location being dark enough to enjoy Milky Way views.

My daughter had a blast, and made some friends as pictured with the glow stick light trails.

The community engagement was great, lots of people interacting with the night sky, asking questions about what they see, gave demonstrations on how to capture the night sky.

Thanks to some electronically assisted astrophotography from we were able to see some live digital images of the deep space objects we saw!

And for a brief moment, there was some diffuse aurora that appeared as the night went on.
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03/29/2026

Big Moon 🌖

The moon always appears larger when it’s next to the horizon, because of an optical illusion.

It’s because you’re seeing it next to terrestrial objects, but if you measure it with a finger, and wait till it’s up higher in the sky it will be the same size.
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03/13/2026

3 weeks ago, I captured a comet! ☄️

I struggled to find Comet C/2024 E1 Wierzchos, as the coordinates had it listed next to NGC300 (the Galaxy to the left of the frame).

But because my camera was inverted at the time from some wide field shots, I kept going in the wrong direction, missing it in every test shot.

Eventually I found it!, I blame space, there’s technically no up or down, unless you have a frame of reference.
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03/09/2026

🌘Better late than never!🌒

The 2026 lunar eclipse at totality.

It was a work night, and it got pretty windy, so I opted for a timelapse with a “set & forget” method.

This frame was taken from the video and enhanced by stacking, a method called lucky imaging which used in planetary imaging.

It’s ok, I’ll do better on the next one in 2028!
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03/01/2026

🚨Space event tomorrow night!*🚨

Set your alarms to head outside and look up, there will be a total lunar eclipse tomorrow night starting from 7:42pm Adelaide time.

The event will go for 5 hours and 10 minutes, with totality being at 10:03pm. Plenty of time to watch the world block the sun’s light from the moon!

*weather permitting. 😅
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02/28/2026

Quick, pull over it’s 🌅

Golden Hour/sunsets just hit differently in the outback.

I actually stayed pulled over till the sunset in the hopes of capturing a “green flash”.

It’s a phenomenon that occurs during sunrise/sunset, but it’s pretty rare to photograph.

It happens because the Earth’s atmosphere bends and separates sunlight, and under the right conditions the last visible colour left from the setting Sun is green.

Which is also my favourite colour. 😎
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02/22/2026

🎌All Japan Day 2026 🎌

Today was such a blast! And the weather held off until closing time, which was good!

It was nice seeing some familiar faces, and familiar cars! Though I tend to remember people by their cars haha 😅

Even my daughter had a great time, waking up early to drive in because she was excited.

If you know an owner, tag them and I’ll add them to the post✌️

今日は良かったですよね！　AJD, ありがとうございました！🙇‍♂️