The Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds in the Southern skies.
A couple of images taken on 30th March at the Macarthur Astronomical Society's dark sky site at The Oaks, NSW. To appreciate these images they should be ENLARGED.
First, a view to the East. This is the classic aboriginal Emu 'Constellation'. The emu's head is the famous Coal-Sack Nebula, just below the Southern Cross.
Scorpius is shown rising just above the horizon. Above it, the constellations of Norma, Lupus, Triangulum Australe, Circinus, Centaurus, Crux and Musca. To the left lies Libra. To the right lies the South Celestial Pole in Octans; and the two Magellanic Clouds. An aircraft is passing behind my telescope in this thirty second exposure. The red glow is the hand controller display on the telescope. Some considerable light pollution is evident from the direction of Camden and Campbelltown.
Secondly, another wide angle shot looking South South West and at a higher angle from the horizon:
This shows the Milky Way, which stretched directly overhead from East (left) to West (right). It also shows the "Pointers"; the constellations of Crux, Carina (with all it's nebulosity); the South Celestial Pole (lower centre, left) in Octans; the Large Magellanic Cloud (lower centre) in Dorado/Mensa; and the Small Magellanic Cloud (bottom left) in Tucana . The bright star (centre-right) is Canopus.
To appreciate the beauty of the Milky Way, the images they should be ENLARGED.
Both images were taken near midnight with my Canon EOS 60D camera mounted on a standard extendable camera tripod (no tracking), with Tamron 10-24 mm zoom lens set to 10 mm. Both exposures were 30 seconds.
The following map shows the general region of the two images.