By now you will have seen many pictures of the eclipse and how it looked from both the earth and (for the first time ever) from the moon. In this post I want to take a slightly different approach and document how I planned the shoot, what I aimed for and how I could approach a similar event next time.

Well 2024 has been a year for the record books, we have had a number of aurora displays. The display on the 11th of May will not be easily forgotten. Thousands upon thousands of New Zealanders made the effort to go and see it, stood in awe, and got a chance to see a side of nature really shown at this latitude. Was this going to be another great display, and how would it look as a timelapse.

I went out for a quick look last night and through the aid of some astro tools on my phone managed to find the comet :)

After a good discussion with Les Rackham about balancing setups I tried a few new ideas last night, which didn't go as well as I would have liked. Still they pointed me to some refinements and further ideas which I will trial later.

I did capture some data though (50 x 5 second exposures at F8 1500 ISO on my Canon 80D with a 70-200 f2.8 L lens) which I merged in ASTAP and then processed in Adobe Photoshop. The shorter exposures was to try and avoid the clipping of the brighter stars in the centre.

There were issues including some teething issues with the mounting and a constant wind. But I am quite surprised at the final image. There are lots of things I can improve from here which is promising.