Milky Way, Magellanic Clouds and airglow
Tuesday January 7th 2014
A view south with airglow of different colours - red from nitrogen gas, green from oxygen, all glowing faintly in the upper atmosphere.
Clouds over the ATs
Thursday January 9th 2014
Clouds on a moonlit night makes for bad observing conditions but good photography conditions. If we can't open the telescopes, then at least I can go outside and take some shots.
Star trails over the Residencia
Saturday January 11th 2014
A view towards the residencia from the platform at Paranal. I made this photo by stacking 500 photos, each of which was a 5s exposure at ISO 3200.
Moon just after full
Monday January 13th 2014
Taken with a very low quality 400mm lens, and lots of post processing.
The Galilean moons
Saturday January 18th 2014
Jupiter was at its closest approach to Earth on January 5th, so during my shift I took a photo of it each night with a 400mm lens. With that, I could see its four largest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They orbit the planet in roughly 2, 4, 8 and 16 days, so over the course of my 11 day shift I could see them all moving around the planet. I worked out which one was which using Sky and Telescope's tool. On 15th January the Moon was very close to Jupiter, which is why the sky is murky grey on that day instead of the nice black the other times.
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