Crux and Eta Carinae

Crux and Eta Carinae, a photo by Astronomr on Flickr.

And friends. First chance I have had to start processing the Tongariro shots in any sort of orderly fashion!

Boingggggg!

A huge thanks to  Xeni Jardin and BoingBoing.net for featuring us and the photos, and especially for you kind words yesterday!

LMC

LMC, a photo by Astronomr on Flickr.

10-Frame stack using Deep Sky Stacker, the damn lens kept slipping out of focus!

Liam Sleeps

Liam Sleeps, a photo by Astronomr on Flickr.

We went nuts with Cameras, all Liam wanted to do was get to sleep!

On remembering to blog

Hi all.  Sorry about the hiatus, there's always a reason, or at least an excuse.

So we got back from Mount Tongariro day before yesterday, with sore muscles, some scratches in rather intimate places and about 4,000 shots of the sky and environs.  These will take a while to process and upload, but for now, take my word for the awesomeness of the trip!

Here's where we were, on the ridge as shown in this map:


View Larger Map

So we climbed up from the hut, and that hurt.  But once we got there and got the tents up, it was click click click all night.  The pics are coming.

In other news:
What's this "Air and Darkness" thing?

Since Val won a photo competition, he's decided to push the photography a bit, with a view to the future, so he came up with a name for it (inspired by Harry Dresden no less) and so we get A&D:

Or maybe should be called ADD :)

Anyways will go back to collating thousands of photos now, post again soon (yeah right).

Quick Edit with a resource:

Light pollution on Google maps

Ngauruhoe Trails

Ngauruhoe Trails, a photo by Astronomr on Flickr.

Second shot processed! A small and very grateful plug here - if you need to rent a camera in Auckland, you can't go past White Studios (http://www.whitestudios.co.nz/).

They rented me a 5d2 for the trip and were helpful, awesome and introduced me to Sammy, the cat :) Very cool peeps, awesome price, great support, highly recommended!

Ngauruhoe Rise

Ngauruhoe Rise, a photo by Astronomr on Flickr.

The first shot from the Tongariro expedition. It was an awesome night to be shooting on a mountain! This is the first shot processed from the 5D Mk2 I hired for the occasion, and all I have to say is wow, full-frame camera is definitely in the cards sometime in the future!

We walked for 2 hours to get to the ridge we had chosen to shoot from, including some insane hill climb action, but totally worth it!! I will be processing and posting the shots, timelapses and stacks as I get time to do them, so watch this space!