Author: Roger Groom

Answer: He uses his observatory remotely from the couch.

Having broken my ankle a couple of weeks back I’m unable to go out exploring for wide-field photographic opportunities so have decided to focus on using my observatory again. Some times experiencing usage rates as high as 26 nights in 30 of a month, for most of April and May it had lay dormant (interests shift).

This photograph of the beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 4945 was taken under brightly moonlit skies not far from full-moon. The dust lanes and detail is still very nice, showing through the moon glow quite nicely.

I would like to add colour data to this, and perhaps more luminance data, but it’s rare for me to revisit targets and give them the exposure time they are justified – see how we go with this one! Fact is there’s just too much up there to photograph for me to spend too long on any one spectacular galaxy!

This image is in my Galaxy Gallery.

A couple of weekends ago I enjoyed making the most of my local surroundings, taking a long awaited trip to a nearby vantage point for some astrophotography of the Milky Way. I captured a few nice images, of which this, titled Valley of Stars, is probably the best:

Unfortunately though, on the way to the location (yes, on the way) I misjudged a step (thought to be 30cm, turned out to be 60cm!) and rolled my ankle with the consequence of a broken ligament and bone fragments broken off with the ligament! After a few moments of intense pain I checked to make sure it wasn’t broken, tightened up my hiking boot, and continued to do three hours of astrophotography. To be honest it wasn’t hurting much after the initial few minutes, and damned if I was going to miss out on a perfect night.

Now almost two weeks later my foot is still in a moon-boot, I’m unable to drive, and I will probably have to have surgery entailing 6 weeks in a plaster cast.

There goes my freedom and wide field astrophotography!

This image is also in my Milky Way gallery.

Check out my new video on Vimeo, it is of the solar eclipse experienced on the 10th May 2013. The eclipse was a partial solar eclipse as viewed from my location in Perth, even though up north at Newman it was an Annular solar eclipse.

10th May Partial Solar Eclipse from Roger Groom on Vimeo.

While up at Broome recently I drove to and flew over James Price Point, the once-proposed site of a gas processing facility, a very controversial proposal. I found it very interesting to see this site first hand, and to photograph it as a Landscape Photographer first hand.

See my photographs of James Price Point in the gallery page.