[Leica] Astronomical images from Australia

[Howard L Ritter Jr]

G’day, Mates—

I finally fulfilled an ambition of over 50 years and visited Australia, actually my first venture south of the equator. I attended something called the OzSky Star Safari <http://ozsky.org/> at a place called the Warrumbungles Mountain Motel outside the town of Coonabarabran, NSW, about 5 hrs NW of Sydney. It’s so far out in deep rural Oz that it’s only a few miles from the Australian National Observatory at Siding Spring, on the edge of Warrumbungle National Park.

My first view of the southern Milky Way from a seriously dark site was astounding, and I highly recommend it as a bucket-list item! As a neophyte astrophotographer, I had taken a Nikon D810A (the one with the sensor glass that better passes deep red) and a couple of zooms. I used the camera on a tripod for the shorter time exposures, and with a tracking device that offsets the Earth’s rotation for the longer shots. I got several nice ones, posted to the Gallery <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Gallery_001/>.

C&C&Q welcomed.

—howard