A city-centre site is not ideal for astrophotography, but the photographs on this page were taken from near the middle of Palmerston North (Bortle class 6).
They show objects most of which are visible to the unaided eye. Some were taken with a DSLR camera through a telescope and are time exposures, or produced from stacking hundreds of single shots from a webcam, so show more detail.

Send email inquiries about material on this page to astronomy@meldrum.nz   

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This all-sky timelapse was taken on 3 February 2021. The milky way stretches across the sky. At the bottom end is Orion (the 'pot'), at the top is the Southern Cross and its pointers. The third quarter moon is rising. Orion and Scorpius are on opposite sides of the sky, so as Orion disappears into the street lights, Scorpius can be seen rising beside the trees on the right, just before the sun comes up.

This is the live virtual sky above Palmerston North, provided by the Las Cumbres Observatory.

SOLAR SYSTEM

SUN

All the planets of the solar system orbit the star Sol (sun). This photograph was taken on 1 January 2022 when the International Space Station passed over Palmerston North just after 3pm. Setting the camera to take a burst of exposures caught the ISS three times during its 0.7 second pass of the sun. Notice there is a group of three sunspots on the lower left of the sun. This was taken with a DSLR camera that had a 300mm telephoto lens attached.

MERCURY

Mercury is the smallest planet and the closest to the sun. Its position results in us only being able to see it just before dawn (if it comes up before the sun), or in the evening as it is getting dark, just as the sun sets. This photo was taken in the twilight at 8.30pm on 11 September 2021. Mercury reaches its greatest eastern elongation of 26.8 degrees on 14 September so this is almost as far from the sun as it ever becomes. The brief time for which Mercury is visible, and its short distance from the horizon, is the reason why it is so infrequently seen. Only slightly bigger than our moon, Mercury is the most elusive of the five planets that can be seen with the unaided eye.

VENUS

Apart from the moon, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky. Yet it is only a crescent. This photo was taken at 6pm on 13 July 2015 through a 9cm refracting telescope, using the little Neximage camera. On 6 June Venus reached its greatest eastern elongation (furthest position from the sun when viewed from Earth). It is still moving closer to us now, but as it does so, less surface is illuminated. Venus appears very bright  because although it is less than a quarter crescent, it is so close that the illuminated area appears large from Earth. A small telescope should give a view similar to this over the next few weeks as the brightly-lit area slowly becomes smaller. By the middle of August it moved between us and the sun, so disappeared.

A 100 second video (5 frames per second) was made, and is available here. Of these 500 shots the best were selected and stacked with Registax software to produce the photo above. With Venus low in the sky it was photographed through a thick and turbulent atmosphere just above the city. The disturbance of the view that resulted is apparent in the video.

MARS

Although the most Earth-like of all the planets it is rare to be able to make out much detail on Mars. This was probably shot during a dust storm. Taken from the Earth's southern hemisphere the image is upside down. The pale area at the top is the southern polar cap of Mars, probably consisting of dry ice. The dark area just below is Syrtis Major (it is triangular and looks like a map of India). Is actually dark balsamic rock.

ASTEROIDS

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are the inner planets. They are much closer to the sun than the rest, with Mars being an average of 228 million km away. There is a gap of 550 million km before the next planet, which is Jupiter. Since the eighteenth century it was thought there should be at least one planet in this space. Instead, the asteroid belt is here. There are believed to be over one million asteroids (rocks) larger than 1 km in diameter, and millions that are smaller.

The largest asteroid of all is Ceres, then Vesta, the third largest is Pallas (spherical in shape and 510km in diameter). This time lapse shows Pallas as it passes through Monoceros in March 2023. It is 15 shots of 2-minute exposures, each 10 minutes apart, so shows the distance moved in just under 3 hours. Click on 'full screen' to see it more clearly, then press 'escape' to return to the page. Pallas was discovered by German astronomer Heinrich Olbers in 1802. It was believed to be a planet, but by 1845 so many had been found that they were called 'minor planets'. By the 1950s the term asteroid was being used. Sometimes the big asteroids like Pallas are called planetoids. .

JUPITER

This photo of Jupiter was taken at 9pm on 6 September 2009. Over 1000 shots were taken (5 per second) and recorded on a laptop.  These were stacked using Registax software to produce this result.  One of Jupiter's Galilean moons (Europa) can be seen to the left.

The light coloured regions are zones and result from upward moving atmosphere.  The dark parts are belts of downward sinking material.  The boundaries between them are bands and the turbulence there results in blue festoons and brown cyclones, particularly near the equator.  The most easily recognised feature is the Great Red Spot, which is actually a light orange cyclone twice the size of the Earth.  The key below points out these features.  This second photo was taken 30 minutes later, notice that the planet has rotated slightly to the right.  It only takes Jupiter 10 hours to make one complete turn, compared to our 24 hours.  This fast rotation is the reason the planet is wider than it is tall.

SATURN

This photograph of Saturn, showing the Cassini division, was taken on 12 July 2016. It was made by stacking the best frames from a five-minute movie taken through a telescope. That movie of the planet is shown on the right.

The shot of Saturn on the left was taken on 20 April 2012. The increasing tilt with time has brought the rings into a position where we can see some detail. The pale outer ring is clear, and the Cassini division between it and the inner ring is just visible. In September 2009 we passed through the plane of the rings so they looked like a straight line through the planet. The black and white shot on the right was taken on 13 July 2010. The maximum tilt occurred during 2017.

URANUS

Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun, named after the Greek god of the sky, and the father of Saturn. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are the five classical planets, but Uranus is so far from the sun that it cannot be seen without a telescope, except from a dark-sky site. That, along with its very slow movement against the background stars, explains why it was not discovered by William Herschel until 1781. It is a gas giant like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. Through a telescope Uranus can be identified because of its blue-green colour, and it is clearly a disc, unlike the points of light from nearby stars.

NEPTUNE

Neptune is the most distant planet from the Sun, and from us, at 4,360,600,000 km from Earth. It was first observed in 1846. Named after the Roman god of the sea, it is more blue in colour than Uranus. A telescope is essential to see Neptune. Neptune's biggest moon, Triton, can just be seen in this photo. There are at least 14 other moons orbiting Neptune. This photo was taken in October 2023. The planet does not rise high when viewed from a latitude more than 40 degrees south, but reaches about 50 degrees above the horizon for a short time in the middle of the night during this month.

PLUTO

Pluto is small, 18% the size of Earth. Russia has more land than Pluto. In 2006 the International Astronomical Union decided it was just a dwarf planet because it has not cleared its path of other objects. There are still space rocks and asteroids along its orbit which it has not collected, unlike all other planets. For those who learned in astronomy classes at school that "Michael's Very Extravagant Mother Just Sent Us Ninety Peacocks" it is difficult to accept that Pluto has been ejected. There are Pluto enthusiasts in the astronomical community who argue that it should once again be considered a planet.

These two photographs were taken on 2 September and 5 September 2024. At this time of the year Pluto is high in the Southern Hemisphere sky between Capricornus and Sagittarius, not far from the Corona Australis. The movement of Pluto in these photographs three days apart is clear, as it moves from the centre to the right. In fact, Pluto takes 248 of our years to orbit the sun. The main reason for this apparent motion is because it is so close to us (5.5 light hours), compared to hundreds of light years for the stars. Our movement as we orbit the sun makes Pluto appear to move owing to parallax. It was by using a blink comparator, which alternates two photos like this, that enabled Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto in 1930.

MOON

LUNAR LANDSCAPE

Here the moon is 81% lit. The details of the surface are easiest to see along the terminator (boundary between light and dark). This photo was taken because the most prominent crater of all (Copernicus) is near the middle of the terminator. You can see the rays of ejecta blasted out from the impact which formed this crater. Copernicus is 93 km wide and nearly 4 km deep.

The dark patches are basaltic lava flows, evidence of the moon's volcanic past.

The photo at left was taken through a small telescope. Binoculars should give similar detail. The photos on this page were all taken from Palmerston North (in the Southern Hemisphere). This is why the moon is upside down compared to the Northern Hemisphere views found in most books. We cannot see a "man in the moon", but there is a rabbit!  Look for it and its long ears on the left of the moon above.

lunar phases

ECLIPSES AND TRANSITS

On 15 April 2014 there was a total lunar eclipse, which had begun before the moon rose in the east. Above the eclipsing moon was the bright star Spica, and Mars was shining in the northeast. This was taken at 7-30pm, about fifteen minutes before the eclipse was total.

The shot on the left was taken at about 7pm, by which time the shadow of the Earth was covering most of the moon. The last photograph shows the moon at 7-45pm, when it was at maximum eclipse. It is never completely dark because the sunlight passing through the Earth's atmosphere is scattered. The red end of the spectrum falls on the moon, the blue end being lost to space.

14 November 2012       Partial Solar Eclipse This photograph of the moon passing between the sun and the Earth was taken at 10.30am when the eclipse was at maximum (most of the sun was obscured). We will not have another eclipse as full as this for thirteen years. About 80% of the sun is hidden by the moon. In northern Australia the eclipse was total, but the sun was not completely hidden from any site in New Zealand.

 

6 June 2012 Transit of Venus One of the rarest events in astronomy did not occur in the twentieth century, and will not be seen again until the twenty-second century (in 105 years from now). This is the passing of the planet Venus between Earth and the sun. It was a wet day in Palmerston North on 6 June, but at 4.20pm, just before the transit finished, the cloud lifted slightly and this photograph was possible. It shows Venus just minutes before it passes from the face of the sun.

 

MILKY WAY GALAXY

NEBULAE

ORION

This wide-angle view of Orion was taken by a DSLR camera riding on a skytracker. It shows Barnard's Loop below the centre of the constellation. Over two hours of exposure was required under the light-polluted sky for it to show up. The loop is a large arc, believed to have originated in a supernova explosion about two million years ago. Stars within the great nebula (brightest patch in the photo) are believed to be responsible for illuminating it.

Orion is the dominant constellation in our summer sky. It has several interesting features. This photo is overexposed in an attempt to show faint aspects, but the bright stars and nebulae are flooded with light. The following photos show more detail. The three bright stars at left are the belt, and the nebulae on the right are the sword. This asterism is 'the pot' to southern hemisphere observers. The belt is the base of the pot and the sword is the handle.

HORSEHEAD AND FLAME NEBULAE

This astrophotograph was taken through a small 8cm refractor telescope. It is made up of 10 three-minute exposures that were stacked.   The brightest star is Alnitak, in the belt of Orion. The flame nebula just below looks like a smudge when seen directly. The dark horsehead nebula above cannot be seen through such a small telescope, so a photograph is essential.   The horsehead was not discovered until 1888 when a photograph was taken at the Harvard Observatory.

The horsehead is small, so a sharp photograph is hard to achieve. This was taken through an 8-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain.

GREAT NEBULA

The great nebula in Orion is easy to see with the unaided eye. Through binoculars some detail can be seen. With any telescope it is impressive.

RUNNING MAN NEBULA

Close to the great nebula is one which is difficult to see in light-polluted areas. The running man nebula is a combination emission and reflection nebula. In the middle there is a dark feature which appears to be a man running along with his arms spread apart. If you live well out of town and have dark skies see if you can find the running man with binoculars.

WITCH HEAD NEBULA

The northeastern star at the top of Orion is Rigel, the seventh brightest star in the sky. Nearby is the extremely faint Witch Head nebula, illuminated by the blue-white light from Rigel. This three hour exposure shows a nebula that is only directly visible through a large telescope under a dark sky. This shot is possible from the city because of the long exposure time and an Optolong L-eNhance light-pollution filter.

ROSETTE NEBULA

The Rosette nebula is in Monoceros (the unicorn) which follows Orion in the summer sky. A large open star cluster is surrounded by a doughnut-shaped dust and gas cloud. This star-forming region is 5,500 light years away.

TOBY JUG NEBULA

This is a reflection nebula surrounding a bright orange star. The dust reflects the star's colour. It is 300 light years away and appears small and dim. With imagination you can see the jug on the left and handle on the right. This photo was taken on a windy night and the telescope would not keep still, so the stars have odd shapes and the nebula is blurred.

PENCIL NEBULA

This is the brightest piece of the Vela supernova remnant. Like all such remnants it has intricate detail. These exist as filamentary strands. The light is rich in doubly-ionised oxygen indicated by the green colour.

SEAGULL NEBULA

The Seagull nebula is also in Monoceros near the Rosette. This very large nebula is 240 light years across, appearing about seven times as wide as the full moon.

THOR'S HELMET NEBULA

Thor's Helmet is a dim emission nebula in the constellation Canis Major, close to Sirius. It is about 12,000 light years away and 30 light years across. The similarity to a winged Viking helmet makes it easy to identify.

SKULL AND CROSSBONES NEBULA

Also high in the summer sky is this emission nebula, a birth-place of stars. It is 17,000 light years from Earth and can be seen in 7x50 binoculars. The bright stars around one eye, and the row below, forming teeth, produce a grinning skull. The two dark lanes beneath the chin are the crossbones. This nebula is sometimes referred to as the pirate of the southern skies.

TARANTULA NEBULA

This nebula is considered to be one of the top five objects in the entire sky owing to its spidery nebulosity. The Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to ours, has several nebulae around it and the Tarantula is the brightest. It is 165,000 light years from Earth.   Just visible to the unaided eye, the Tarantula is easily seen in binoculars, and high in the sky during summer.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is full of nebulae, the picture on he left shows some of the small examples near to the Tarantula. On the right the scattering of nebulae close to the centre of the Cloud is shown.

HELIX NEBULA

This nebula is in the constellation Aquarius. It is one of the closest to Earth of all the bright planetary nebulae, about 655 light years distant. Sometimes referred to as the 'Eye of God' or 'Eye of Sauron'. Planetary nebulae form from dying stars which shed their outer layers as the centre becomes a white dwarf star. The previously expelled gases fluoresce from the glow of the central star.

ETA CARINAE NEBULA

High in the southern sky during April is the large Eta Carinae Nebula. It is bright enough to be seen in binoculars. Look at the region halfway between the Southern Cross and False Cross and you will see it, plus several other star clouds nearby. They cover almost 2 by 3 degrees in area.   Set in the milky way, the contrast between the bright nebulosity and the dark lanes with the scattering of bright stars throughout make it stand out. A small telescope is best for observing because the nebula is so big.

Very close to Eta Carinae is the Gabriela Mistral nebula, at the top right of this photo. The bright part of this nebula resembles the profile of the Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet looking to the upper right.   The lower part shows the edge of the greater Eta Carinae nebula.   The western edge of the Gabriela Mistral nebula, which is similar to a famous photo of her, appears to be the shock front from the energy released by the young stars forming in this region. The nebula is 7,200 light years away.

Close to the Eta Carinae region are several deep sky treasures. The Banana Nebula (NGC3199) and Whirling Dervish Nebula (NGC3247) are only a few degrees away, and just over one degree from each other. In a wide-field telescope both these nebulae can be seen at once. The banana is a crescent which is by far the brightest part of an almost complete ring of nebulosity 11,736 light years away. The Whirling Dervish is a dimmer nebula. The body and skirt of the dancer and the outstretched arms can be seen. It is 26,000 light years away.

Further away, on the other side of the Eta Carinae area, are two large nebulae. The Torch Bearer Nebula is really a small, close one, in front of a much larger, but far more distant nebula. The large one on the left of this photo is the largest in the Milky Way, but it is 20,000 light years away.

The Running Chicken Nebula is a very big object covering 2.2 degrees by 1.9 degrees. This photo shows just the area around the head of the chicken. The comb, eye, beak and wattle can be seen.

STAR CLUSTERS

Probably the best known deep-sky object in the Southern Hemisphere is this open cluster. It is the Jewel Box. A bright group of stars which lies just outside the Southern Cross. Easy to spot with binoculars, it is next to Mimosa, at the bottom left corner of this photograph (the second brightest star of the Southern Cross). Even the city lights do not diminish the impact of this cluster.

 

The cluster on the left is The Pin Cushion, or The Black Arrow. Just to the right of the centre of the cluster is an area devoid of stars, bound by two parallel rows of stars, that seems to form the shaft of an arrow. Just over 1,300 light years away. On the right is The Pendant. A rival for the Jewel Box, with the added bonus of bright and dark nebulosity. Most of the stars are young blue super-giants, except for one red giant. About 85 stars at a distance of 8,400 light years.

Matariki is the Maori name for the Pleiades star cluster (also known as the "seven sisters" because those with good vision can usually see seven stars, just with the unaided eye). Before sunrise during the New Zealand winter this cluster is visible as a faint group of tiny dots rising above the eastern horizon. This occurs during June/July and marks the beginning of the Maori new year. There is a public holiday in New Zealand at this time, and will be on Friday 20 June in 2025.

 

Globular star clusters are interesting deep-sky objects. This is Omega Centauri which is the brightest of all. It is also close at just 16,000 light years and contains about a million stars. The binocular view looks like a large oval cloud. This photograph was taken with a Mintron camera through a Meade telescope on 5 April 2013. Until then the cluster did not rise high enough above the horizon until late at night. Through the winter it will be easier to find.

The southern hemisphere globular cluster, 47 Tucanae is one of the most impressive. It is easy to resolve in small telescopes and bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye, just to the west of the Small Magellanic Cloud. It is in the constellation Tucana the Toucan and the second brightest cluster after Omega Centauri. This photograph was taken on 9 February 2013 as the cluster sank lower in the southwestern sky.

Most star clusters are open clusters. They are described according to objects they resemble, although they usually do so remotely. This photograph shows Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The full moon is nearby so the sky is light. To the right is the open cluster M41 (or Little Beehive). It is made up of about 75 stars and looks like a skep (dome-shaped straw beehive) with bees streaming out if it. A very easy cluster to find with a small telescope.

This large cluster is impressive. At the base of the long axis of the false cross it is a fuzzy patch to the unaided eye. Bright white stars make up the head and shoulders of the sprinter. Looping chains of stars form the arms. Giant red stars make up a pair of golden running shoes. There is also a gold medal on the sprinter's chest.

CONSTELLATIONS

SAGITTARIUS ON 21 JULY 2018

The last couple of winters we concentrated on observing the numerous deep sky objects close to Scorpius (see the photograph below).   This year we have moved to the neighbouring constellation, Sagittarius. Most folk recognise it because of the teapot shape. It follows Scorpius, rising just a little later in the eastern sky. There was no moon on 21 July 2018, so this 20 second exposure shows the steam (Milky Way) coming out of the spout, without moonlight pollution hiding it.   The Corona Australis is to the south of Sagittarius and not visible north of 53o so cannot be seen from the United Kingdom, but can from southern Europe and the southern United States. We are far enough south for it to reach high into our winter night sky.

SCORPIUS ON 12 JULY 2016

Scorpius is the most well recognised winter constellation. This year both Mars and Saturn were nearby. This photo was taken low in the sky (towards the east) just after it became dark , but the moonlight and city lights cause poor contrast. Labels have been added to point out the most interesting areas. Antares means "rival of Mars", yet Mars is so close to us at present that it clearly outshines the star. They are both red in colour. The centre of the Milky Way passes close to the tail of the scorpion causing the cloudy appearance. Use binoculars or a small telescope to get a better view of the star clusters and nebulae.

This is a view through a telescope of the trifid and lagoon nebulae (at the bottom of the photo above). The trifid is on the left. It was named by Sir John Herschel because of the three dark rifts which divide the nebula and join at the centre. The lagoon on the right is much brighter and larger. In dark skies it can be seen with the unaided eye as a bright patch in the milky way.

This area, the heart of the galaxy, includes the eagle nebula. It has spread out wings, plus head and beak towards the left. It is 6,500 light years away. In the centre of this nebula are the dark "pillars of creation", so named because here dust clouds are in the process of creating new stars.

Also labelled in the Scorpius photograph above are two interesting star clusters. The shot on the left shows the Ptolemy cluster through the telescope. It has enough bright stars to be seen with the unaided eye. The shot on the right is the Butterfly cluster. Mostly blue-white stars, the brightest is red-orange. With some imagination the shape of a butterfly can be seen.

GALAXIES BEYOND OURS

LEO TRIPLET

We are in the Milky Way galaxy, but there are millions of other galaxies (vast clusters of stars) beyond. All the stars in this photo are in our galaxy, but there are three further galaxies in this shot too. It is known as the Leo triplet because these three appear so close, which is a rarity. They are in the constellation Leo, which is low in our northern sky during May, so light pollution is bad.   The upper one is M65 which we see edge-on, below is M66, which is more face-on. Both are spiral galaxies. Near the bottom left corner is NGC3628, a twisted galaxy and also edge-on. These are all calculated to be 30 to 35 million light years away.

GRUS QUARTET

The constellation Grus (the crane) during October.   These are four spiral galaxies.

FORNAX GALAXY CLUSTER

Fornax (Latin for furnace) is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, and has a cluster of 58 fairly bright galaxies. They are mostly large elliptical-type, about 62 million light years away.   There are more than twenty galaxies in this photo. The most obvious have their names under them.

GREAT BARRED SPIRAL GALAXY

This barred spiral galaxy (also in the photograph above) is a very large double-barred galaxy, twice the length of the Milky Way. Its two outer spiral arms spread over about 300,000 light years. Four supernovae have been observed in this galaxy, the latest in 2012. There is a supermassive black hole in the nucleus.

NGC2997 SPIRAL GALAXY

This galaxy is high in the sky during March, well away from the city lights. A medium aperture telescope under dark skies is needed to show the spiral arms. It is 40 million light years away.

COBRA AND MOUSE GALAXIES

This pair of galaxies in the deep south is very dim. The one-armed barred spiral galaxy is the cobra snake rearing up to strike at the tiny mouse galaxy below and to the right.

CENTAURUS A (NGC5128)

Centaurus A is a giant lenticular galaxy, the fifth brightest in the sky, so an easy target to find. It lies about 13 million light years from Earth. Sometimes called a starburst galaxy, it has over one hundred star-forming regions. The strange shape is thought to have resulted from a large elliptical galaxy and a spiral one (like ours) running into one another long ago. Everything in space is moving so collisions happen regularly.

CIGAR GALAXY

The cigar galaxy in Centaurus is large, but faint. About 15 million light years away.

SOMBRERO GALAXY

This galaxy is distinct owing to the dark lane that cuts across the face of the bright core. Visible in binoculars as a small streak, in larger apertures the dark lane and symmetry are impressive. About 50 million light years away.

SOUTHERN PINWHEEL GALAXY

This is a face-on spiral galaxy in Hydra and bright enough to see in binoculars. It is 15 million light years away. Four supernovae were seen during last century making it one of the most active galaxies.

EQUIPMENT

The deep sky astrophotographs above were taken with this gear.   The computerised mount is a Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro. The imaging telescope is an Orion ED80T CF. An 8cm refractor. The camera attached is a Canon EOS 60Da DSLR. On the right is a 5cm Primalucelab guiding telescope with an Orion StarShoot autoguiding camera attached. On top of the imaging telescope is an Orion QuikFinder, a handy viewer to help indicate where the telescope is pointing. On the left is a Celestron StarSense. This is only connected to the mount when finding objects seems impossible and the StarSense ability to take photographs and plate solve them makes finding the dimmest targets certain. The cables attached to the cameras are plugged into a Windows 10 laptop running PHD2 software for autoguiding, and Backyard EOS to capture the astrophotographs.

 

When using a telescope it needs to have the small finder scope on the side accurately set so we can easily identify what we want to view. This is done during the day by lining the telescope up with the top corner of a building and adjusting the cross-hairs of the finder scope to match.

 

New Zealand's Rocket Lab launches satellites from its complex at the southern tip of Mahia Peninsula on the east coast of the North Island. The Electron rockets they use have a mass of 12.55 tons at liftoff and are 17m tall. They can take 150kg payloads to a 500km sun-synchronous orbit.

For those wanting to recognise the stars and planets there is an excellent resource available at www.cybersky.comThis freeware programme will turn your computer into a planetarium. It shows a labeled view of what the sky looks like now, or almost any time in the past or future. It is ideal for learning the names of the stars, constellations and planets. Just print out the map, then go outside and identify everything.

For those interested in satellite-watching visit www.heavens-above.com This site will tell you when and where to look to see the next bright satellite pass over your place.

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