Posts Tagged astrophotography

Star Trails over The Quiver Trees of Namibia

Here’s a star trail I captured one very warm summer’s evening over the Quiver Trees of Namibia. Namibia is a prized location for night photography and just a fantastic country to spend the evening outside under the majestical night skies. Enjoy

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The African Cosmos | TimeScape of Winter Solstice 2012

Every Winter Solstice in South Africa for the last 7 years I have braved the cold evenings outside capturing the night skies. Last night I went for a full 12 hours of photography starting at dusk and finishing at dawn to capture the

2012 Winter Solstice from Southern Africa

.

I had visualized this timelapse in my head for some time and it turned out beyond my expectations making this a very memorable Winter Equinox for me. In between my camera and battery checks in the wee hours of this morning, I did manage to sneak a few hours of interrupted sleep as the Sun made it’s final move across the equatorial line. This morning I had several thousand images to deal with and process before I could complete this timescape of the

African Cosmos

.

So we are now officially in Winter in South Africa and we can start adding a few seconds each day as our days get slightly longer and as we move towards the Spring and Summer Equinoxes.

Actual construction of the final timescape took me several hours with some tweaking here and there and here it is now for you to enjoy

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Africa’s Night Skies | AstroPhotography Astro Landscapes

Dear Readers

I hope you will join me tonight on Twitter. I am being interviewed by the

Smithsonian National Museum of African Art

as part of their

African Cosmos

exhibition.

To follow the interview on Twitter make sure to follow @AfricanCosmos and @MitchellKrog. If you have any questions on my astro or lightning photography feel free to tweet them using @AfricanCosmos and #MKastro.

Below I’ve selected some of my favourite

Astrophotography

and

Astro Landscape

images shot under Africa’s Night Skies over the past few years.





ABOVE: The Lunar Eclipse of the 15th of June 2011. A very cold evening under Africa’s Night Skies with heavy dew falls caused some very interesting optical effects giving a very different view of a lunar eclipse.

ABOVE: The International Space Station (ISS) streaking across South Africa’s Night Skies on the 30th of August 2009. This Astro Landscape photograph taken on a friends farm in the North West province of South Africa.

ABOVE: The Bubbling Spacecraft Spectacle that caused a stir in South Africa on the night in took place. What many thought was a UFO (myself included) was later confirmed as a Centaur Rocket launched several hours earlier from the United States. The bubbling / ring effect was said to be venting of excess fuel from the rocket. This series of images appeared in Finnish and Russian Astronomy Magazines in December of 2009. Here’s an article on it.

ABOVE: Another photo of the Centaur Rocket Venting Excess Fuel aka The Bubbling Spacecraft UFO Spectacle.

ABOVE: The Moon is always an interesting Astrophotography subject of mine and Africa’s Night Skies offer some of the greatest locations for Moon Photography. This Perigee Full Moon was photographed on the 30th of January 2010 from my farm in Magaliesburg, South Africa.

ABOVE: The moon in totality during the Lunar Eclipse of 15th June 2011. This was an exceptionally cold night over Gauteng but when it comes to Astrophotography you simply have no choice and the coldest nights under Africa’s Night Skies are often the best.

ABOVE: For several weeks spanning March through April 2012, Venus went through some interesting conjuctions and Africa’s Night Skies offered some very different views than the rest of the world. This evening of the 12th of March I captured the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter shortly after sunset. This image was featured on SpaceWeather.com and one of their readers pointed out to me I had also captured the International Space Station (ISS) which you can see streaking in from the bottom left of the image.

ABOVE: One of my earlier Astrophotography images from 2007. This was the conjunction of Venus by the Moon.

ABOVE: Africa’s Night Skies offer great Astrophotography Star Trails opportunities. On this very cold evening I tried something different capturing not only the movement of the stars but also movement in the trees caused by a cold night wind.

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Namibias Night Skies | Astro Landscape Photography

I captured this image in the

Quiver Tree Forest of Namibia

during one of my trips there during 2011. Namibia is a great location for night time photography and on most evenings, in the very dark locations, you can literally walk by starlight alone.

Namibia’s night skies

offer great opportunities for

Astro Landscape Photography

and one is only limited by time, dedication and imagination. Even though I have traveled vast distances through Namibia, the Quiver Tree forest is still such a special location and no trip to Namibia is every complete without spending at least one or two nights there.

I used a simple hand held light to illuminate the main subject and some of it’s surrounds being careful not to over expose any part of the scene and was pleased with the final outcome of the image.

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Lunar Eclipse – Amazing Optical Photo Effect (South Africa)

Hi friends, here’s another image from the lunar eclipse over South Africa last night. An amazing optical effect if I say so myself. This image of the lunar eclipse over South Africa was taken at 9:02pm using an extreme wide angle lens. This image is not manipulated or modified in any way whatsoever, this is what came straight out of camera. Most likely caused by misting on the lens due to the heavy dew fall last night, even though I was cleaning lenses with an anti-mist cloth every 2 minutes. I am pleased with the resulting image. Taken from Magaliesburg, South Africa

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