Can there be any more dramatic and beautiful view
for the stargazer than the sight of the Milky Way majestical-
ly spread across the sky from horizon to horizon, with the
central bulge high overhead?For those of us who call Canada home, the centre of our
home galaxy never gets very high in the sky, even in the
summer when the constellations Scorpius, Ophiuchus
and Sagittarius present their best view.For this reason, every year or two I travel to the central
Australian Outback around the time of New Moon.Hiking and climbing in the national parks is wonderful,
with the fantastical shapes of the rock
outcrops, the distinctive red iron rock
and soil, and — oh yes — the curious
rock wallabies that watch us from their
craggy perches.Equally exhilarating are the quiet
nights in the desert, when one beholds
the spectacle of a clear dark sky. here
are so many objects that we just can't
see from Canada's latitudes.In September 2019, my wife, Helen, and
I returned to the Outback for three
weeks with our daughter, Jennifer. I
took a portable German equatorial
mount with a Tele Vue NP127is astro-
photographic telescope. he telescope
has a diameter of ive inches and a focal
length of 660 mm, which I used for
some close-up views of the Magellanic
Clouds and various star clusters and nebulae. I use a
Nikon D810a astrophotography camera, which has the
red blocking ilter removed. his allows photographers
to capture the pink-red colour of ionized (or electrically
charged) hydrogen gas clouds.To shoot wider-angle scenes of the sky, I use camera lenses
with a focal length of 35 mm to 200 mm, and mount the
camera on top of the telescope saddle with a large Kirk
Enterprises ball head. his holds the camera very steady,
and lets me aim it any direction in the sky.he one image that I really wanted was of the Milky Way
spanning as much of the sky as I could get with a wide-
angle lens. I chose an observing site on the Stuart Highway,
40 kilometres south of the town of Alice Springs. he sky is
so dark that the zodiacal light is a startlingly bright cone
rising up from the western horizon at the end of evening
twilight in September.For this image, I used a Sigma 35 mm f/1.4 Art lens, which
gives excellent star images from corner to corner. To reduce
vignetting — which is much more pronounced and noticeableat larger apertures — and to make the stars as small and
sharp as possible, I stopped the lens down from f/1.4 to f/4.he sensor on the Nikon D810a is so good that I can capture
everything that I need with short exposures at high ISO set-
tings. his image was assembled from ten identical stacked
frames, each of a one-minute exposure at ISO 2500. he
exposures were short enough and the drive on the mount
was suiciently accurate that I did not need any autoguiding.
Back in Canada, I processed the ten subframes on my desktop
computer in Adobe Photoshop CS6, using nothing more than
the functions that are familiar to all serious photographers —
levels, brightness and contrast, and colour balance adjust-
ment on various portions of the image.his view of the central bulge of the
Milky Way, high in the sky and running
from southern Aquila at the left to
Norma and Ara at the right, is one
that we cannot see from Canada or
the United States. Dozens of open and
globular star clusters, as well as difuse
bright and dark nebulae, populate the
constellations of Scutum, Sagittarius,
Ophiuchus and Scorpius. he detail in
the bright and dark lanes of the Milky
Way is striking.he rarest feature of this image is the
presence of interloper planets Jupiter
and Saturn. Jupiter is the bright object
one-quarter of the way down from the
top edge of the frame, almost centred
from left to right; Saturn, not quite as
bright, is very close to the bottom of
the frame, left of centre. It is extremely unusual to see these
two outer planets set against the centre of the Milky Way.
Jupiter orbits the Sun in a little under 12 years, and Saturn
in about 30 years. Faster Jupiter passes Saturn, and catches
up with it again 19 to 20 years later. he last time these
two planets were visible together in the Sagittarius-Ophiu-
chus-Scorpius area was in the autumn of 1960. he next
time will be in January 2339, in Scorpius. hat’s more than
three centuries from now.Jupiter will be in conjunction with Saturn in western
Capricornus in December 2020, when they will be too
close to the Sun to be seen. he two planets last passed
each other in May 2000, and previously in July 1981 and
February 1961.his appearance of Jupiter and Saturn together against
the backdrop of the centre of the Milky Way is a much
rarer sight than even transits of Venus.his is, for me, a dramatic image that reminds me of the
romance and wonder that I experience every time I return
to my spiritual home: the night sky Down Under. •“The sky is so
dark that the
zodiacal light
is a startlingly
bright cone
rising up from
the western
horizon at the
end of evening
twilight.”
SKYNEWS • MAR/APR 2020