I had absolutely the most amazing night last night.
After a day in bed feeling wiped out I met a guy called Fraser at 9.30 and we drove out to lake Alexandrina. I then had three hours of astrophotography. He has $60,000 worth of equipment in terms of telescopes and cameras, which I got to use.
He set up the equipment and then showed me his very clever toy - it's a piece of software that knows exactly where all the stars, nebulas etc are. He tells it which one he wants to see and the telescope moves by itself until it has located the correct thing. It took about an hour to get each photo (I was out for three hours and completely froze my nuts off it was so cold) because we had to take several photos each time - with different exposures so they could be layered on the computer to get all the detail. We then edited them out there among the tussock grasses on his laptop with Photoshop; bringing out all the colours.
It was incredible. I love astronomy and I love photography so what a great mix. I saw the southern cross, and photographed things like the orion nebula and the tarantula nebula. I am so pleased with the photos - I thought we would be photographing constellations and wouldn't pick up much detail. But the end result in each case was stunning.
I am putting one photo here that I took - it's nowhere near one of the best but I want to save those to show them to people when I get home. And it's a big file, so I have no idea what will show up here. But it will give you an idea. My neck and elbow gave me a lot of trouble last night so I am off to the hot springs today. What a life! What a trip!! Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would experience a night like last night.
