Moonlit Sentinels by Pete Wheeler
This timelapse sequence was captured at CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory with light from a setting Moon illuminating the landscape. In the foreground are the 256 antennas that belong to the Aperture Array Verification System, an instrument that’s paving the way for the 130,000 low-frequency antennas that will be built as part of the Square Kilometre Array in Australia in the coming decade.
This sequence involves nearly six hundred 20-second exposures captured over a 5-hour period.
Immediately above the horizon, a strong airglow (often called nightglow) can be seen. Airglow is a faint luminescence of Earth’s upper atmosphere caused by solar radiation and cosmic rays interacting with air molecules.
In the sky above, the Milky Way is visible with the head of the indigenous emu constellation pointing towards the ground, dipping its head into the airglow as if drinking from a billabong.
Canon 6D
Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM ‘Art’ Lens
583 x 20-second exposures
Minor processing and colour correction in Lightroom and Photoshop.
