These pictures of bioluminescence in the Gippsland Lakes in my gallery have proven quite popular, so it seems time to provide a story to accompany them. But this is not a short story, rather a convoluted one of fires and floods, of microscopic algae and the inspiring, remarkable and surprising beauty of nature.

At the end of a very enjoyable three days of astrophotography with a several other astronomers at the Leon Mow Dark Sky Site in Victoria (Australia), I caught a nice display of Geminid meteors. Over two or three hours, while also tending to cameras and telescopes, I spotted about 44 Geminid meteors as well as a number of other 'sporadics'. My camera also caught quite a few.

For two hours, I kept a Canon 5D mkII ticking over at ISO3200 with 8 second exposures through a 24mm f1.4 lens wide open, all on a Vixen GP-DX equatorial mount. I stacked that against a single 2 minute exposure to capture the surrounding stars and the milky way through Orion and up to Sirius and Canis Major at the top.

Click for larger size

It's been awhile since I started playing with night sky timelapse videos, but finding a way to share them online with better than YouTube quality has been a bit of a stretch. Enter SmugMug and their video galleries which do the job nicely.

Below are the first few videos I've put online. You can even get them in Full HD resolution via the SmugMug 'Stars in Motion' gallery.

As the convenor of the Australian Greens has just said, "perhaps the only thing more despairing than the science is the current politics of climate change". And it looks like Tim Colebatch in "The Age" agrees, with his article "A Race to the Bottom":

Here are a select few photos from a week of back country skiing on the NSW Main Range:

Whites River Hut

I've spent the last week trapsing around NSW, starting at the Central West Astronomical Society's 2009 Astrofest in Parkes - home of 'The Dish' (better in HD!):

Thanks to everybody who celebrated with us at our Ceilidh, whether you were there in person or in spirit.

Thanks to our wonderful family and friends who helped before, during and after the event - you were great! :-)

And special thanks to:

On Saturday I dragged Neil Creek, a long time and astronomically minded friend, to Heathcote. A contributing factor was that I knew we'd both enjoy pointing his brand new Canon 5DmkII at the heavens, and in particular towards Comet Lulin.

Am I jealous.. you bet :-)

It's a good thing Andy (and Toni's camera) came on the launch ride after all:

Through a combination of luck and good fortune, Kaz and I have three different Canon cameras - a venerable 20D DSLR, an ultra compact IXUS 70 and most recently the G9. Phil wants to know how much he sacrifices when he takes the G9 cross country skiing instead of the 20D and Kaz wants to prove that the G9 she chose to keep (after Phil won it) is really better than the IXUS 70.