I have made this no frills website to display some of the images that I have taken of the night sky. Most of the photos are wide field shots of the southern sky taken near Tekapo New Zealand. I own two Pentax Spotmatic (SPII) camera's and a selection of lenses from 21mm - 400mm which I use for most of my astrophotography. Many of the photographs are long exposures (many minutes) and are taken with my camera mounted on an old glass plate asrograph; which if I am lucky can track for up to an hour with no noticeable trailing. Aurora photographs are taken with the camera mounted on a tripod. Some of the images in this gallery are taken with telescopes. I have been fortunate to occasionally have the use of a telescope at the University of Canterbury Mount John observatory where I work.
I have experimented with different films in an attempt to find some that I consider to be good for astrophotography. I have not conducted any standardized tests of films but I hope I will be able to display qualitatively the usefulness of different films for photographing the night sky. I have so far only used colour print film but I hope to soon try colour negative film and black and white film. I have noticed that film emulsions change quite frequently and often without much notice. Please tell me if you find the information out of date. GeoCities only allows a small ammount of traffic so you may not be able to link to all the larger images here in one day.
I have marked the images with prominent astronomical objects and constellations. This is done in part to prevent issues arising with the future publication of the original images. If you want an image without the markings send me an e-mail (address at bottom of page) and we can make some arrangement.
Scorpius |
Crux Centauris |
Sagittarius |
Aurora |
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Aurora |
Crux region |
The SMC & Globular clusters |
Lagoon Nebula region |
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Carina Nebula region |
Tarantula Nebula region |
The Small Magellanic Cloud |
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Orion Nebula region |
Lunar Craters |
Moon |
Aurora with Rays |
Southern Milky Way |
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Aurora |
Carina Nebula |
47 Tucana |
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LMC |
Lagoon Nebula |
Tarantula Nebula |
If you wish to contact me about this website my e-mail address is below. Replace the (at) with @.
paulonieka(at)hotmail.com