This year, thanks largely to COVID, I've not been shooting much in the way of landscapes. Pre-COVID I'd be traveling regularly for imaging and it just hasn't been possible this year (quite literally we are not allowed to leave the country other than under exceptional circumstances.) Many borders between states within Australia have also been closed for much of the year, so I've had to diversify.
I started branching out into deep space astrophotography, something that can be done without travelling too far (or even from your backyard, albeit living in Sydney this is not ideal due to LP.) I try and get out of Sydney for darker skies where I can, and this image was taken only an hour out of Sydney, at a location with exceptionally dark skies - at least for the proximity to the largest city in the country.
This image of the Orion Nebula (and the Running Man Nebula in the top right) was made recently using a telescope with a 400mm focal length, with a dedicated cooled astronomy camera and equatorial tracking mount. Orion has an exceptionally bright core and exposure blending is mandatory with this target to avoid blowing out the core detail. This shot is two hours of 120s exposures for the majority of the detail and another 20 minutes of much shorter (10-15s) exposures for the brightest part of the core.
Orion is visible in the summer in Australia so I had been waiting for it to start rising early enough to be a viable imaging target. I plan on adding more data to this image over the coming months to hopefully have a 12+ hour integration by the end of summer - but pretty happy with how this looks after only two-and-a-bit hours.
