The Southern Stars
My wife and I travelled to New Zealand for a walking holiday over Christmas and New Year 2019-20. We would be spending a lot of time in the wilderness of the South Island and Stewart Island so I took a few astro bits in the hope of clear skies. How did I get on?
Lightweight Travel Rig
Although we would be going to some very remote areas with the potential for incredible skies, I had to carry everything, sometimes for up to 6 days, along with my essential walking gear. I couldn’t afford the space for a dedicated astronomy camera, so I’d be using my all purpose M4/3 Panasonic GX7 with a 20mm pancake lens (with an impressive f/1.7) on the SiFo MSM rotator. I also had my GoPro for the holiday, which I’d been experimenting with back in the UK for tracked astro shots.
Lightweight Manfrotto travel tripod, with short stub and Bresser mini-wedge with adjustable alt/azi controls
With SiFo MSM rotator, ballhead and GX7 +20mm pancake I also had an illuminated polar scope.
Did I get clear skies?
My location in the Greenstone valley near Lake McKellar
Well, generally….no. In fact, I only had one evening when the stars aligned (literally) and I had the opportunity for some astronomy. It turns out the British don’t have a monopoly on clouds.
I was walking the Greenstone Track as part of the Grand Traverse (The Greenstone & Routeburn Track over 6 days with Ultimate Hikes). Our second & third nights were spent at Mckellar Lodge, near Lake Mckellar. As it was summer, it didn’t get dark until around 11pm and there was also the threat of being eaten alive by sand flies, New Zealand’s biting insect menace. I got my kit ready inside and waited until dusk.
I wanted to try and take a number of 20-30 sec exposures to stack. Targets included the Southern Cross, Orion (upside down!) and some areas I never get to see from the Northern Hemisphere like the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds.
The biggest challenge as setting up the SiFo with a southern polar alignment. With no southern pole star I knew it would be a struggle to get an accurate alignment, and in truth, given my limited window of opportunity, I did rush this a bit. I was using a combination of a compass, my iPhone and an illuminated polar scope featuring the brightest stars in Octans as a reference for the polar area. I found the polar scope useless - I had no idea what I was looking for, so used my phone and compass as best I could to set up broadly south and at 45deg (I was at latitude 45deg South). For this the Bresser mini-wedge was very useful.
As I was not convinced by my alignment I decided to take much shorter exposures of 5-10secs. My second challenge was getting decent focus. The pancake lens is very fast and wide, but was hard to manually focus onto a bright star - half my images were indeed out of focus. But I did get a number of single frames, shot in RAW, that were good enough to take into Lightroom and stretch out the detail….
Image 1 - Orion
This single frame shows Orion & Sirius rising over the mountains to the NE. Cluster M41 is visible above & right of Sirius. The last of the daylight was catching the tops of the mountains. The lodge was in a river valley between 2,000m mountains to the East & West. Single frame 6 sec at ISO800.
Image 2 - Orion
Same location maybe 45mins later with all the major stars of Orion now clear of the mountains. Single frame 11 sec at ISO1600.
Image 3 - LMC
The LMC was directly overhead. I struggled to get the angle to capture the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds together. This was the best frame of the LMC with bright stars Canopus (left), Avior (bottom) with cluster NGC2516 just above. Single frame 9 sec at ISO1600.
Image 4 - The Southern Cross
The Pointers (Hadar & Rigil Kentaurus) above the central silhouetted tree pick out Crux - The Southern Cross and the Coal Sack. The Eta Carinae Nebula is the pinky cloud top left. NGC 3114 sits above it and NGC3532 below. The dark lanes of the Milky Way slice across the sky. This was taken just as the sky was getting dark. Single frame 4 sec at ISO1600.
Image 5 - The Southern Cross
Same view, half an hour later. This time 5 sec at ISO3200.
Image 6 - The Pleiades
The Pleiades & Hyades above the northern horizon. Single frame 9 sec at ISO1600.