This is a wide-angle view of the well-known constellations of the northern hemisphere winter season, but seen here from the southern hemisphere lookin
This is a wide-angle view of the well-known constellations of the northern hemisphere winter season, but seen here from the southern hemisphere looking north from latitude 31° S on an austral autumn night, March 3, 2024. Orion and the surrounding constellations are seen here "upside-down" compared to the way they are familiar to northern astronomers. The Milky Way runs vertically through the frame, from Canis Major at top to Auriga at bottom. Orion (with blue Rigel and red Betelgeuse) is left of centre; Sirius and Canis Major are at top; Procyon and Canis Minor are right of centre; Castor and Pollux in Gemini are below right of centre; Auriga is at bottom; Aldebaran and the Pleiades in Taurus are at bottom left above the gum tree; Regulus in Leo is at far right; the star cluster Messier 44, the Beehive, in Cancer is between Regulus and Castor & Pollux. The image was processed to enhance the pink and red nebulosity in this rich area of sky, especially around Orion. Taken with a filter-modified Canon Ra camera, but no filter per se was used other than a clip-in Astronomik UV/IR-Cut filter to reduce the haloes on bright stars that the Ra is prone to. Oddly, using this filter also improves the off-axis sharpness of the lens used here, an 11mm TTArtisan full-frame fish-eye, wide open at , but re-focused closer than infinity to obtain sharp stars with the clip-in filter. All on the MSM Nomad tracker, for a blend of 4 x 2-minutes tracked at ISO 1600 for the sky and 2 x 2-minutes untracked at ISO 800 for the ground. So the trees and horizon are blurred from the blend of tracked and untracked images. Taken on a perfect night March 3, 2024 from Mirrabook Cottage near Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia, near the Warrumbungles National Park. In Australia, the seasons are "meteorological" not astronomical, so autumn is said to begin March 1 not March 21 with the equinox.
Size: 6690px × 4450px
Photo credit: © Alan Dyer / VWPics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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