Winter is nearly here.

On the 21st of June winter will officially starts here in New Zealand due to the winter solstice where the sun will reach its most northerly point in the sky, this is a great time for astrophotography because the nights are long and cold and also the weather is clear... Well when it wants to be. This year I am aiming more for long exposure shots with my camera on my equatorial mounted telescope. I am still waiting on the arrival of a new RA (right ascension) motor drive because my other one accidentally broke. I am hoping to get more images of the winter milky way which will include the galactic bulge and the more northern part of the galaxy as well. I am also focusing on imaging closer regions of Rho Ophiuchi, lagoon nebula and trifid nebula (M8 & M20) and I would also like to give the Andromeda galaxy a go, even though this galaxy doesn’t get very high in the sky at the latitude I am at. The event I am most looking forward to is the rising of the Pleiades on the 13th this month; this event is known to Maori as Matariki and is the start of the New Year and will be worth getting up at dawn to photograph even though the waning gibbous moon will be high in the north for us. The date I will be hoping for good weather is the 21st when a thin crescent moon will be joining the Pleiades for a very close encounter. Mercury, Venus and Mars will also be close by and Jupiter will be
Hanging by the moon


Please please please please be fine.
Clear Skies everyone.