Milky Way Photographer of the Year ✨
Pretty stoked to have my image of the Tekapo lupins selected for the 2025 Milky Way photographer of the year collection by @capturetheatlas
I've been following this competition for several years now, so to be shared alongside some of the best astrophotographers in the world is very special.
#astrophotography #nightsky #milkyway #cannon #twanight #newzealand #astronomy #longexposure #capturetheatlas #astro #nightphotography #nightscaper #youresa #yourshotphotographer #darkskyshare
Huge thank you to the @europeanspaceagency for the opportunity to share a collection of my images!
I’m an astrophotographer from New Zealand and have spent the past few years living and working in a dark sky reserve on the South Island.
My photography style focuses mainly on nightscapes—capturing the night sky from some of the darkest places on Earth over starlit foregrounds.
While most of my images are from here in New Zealand, I’ve recently traveled to Australia and the US to photograph the night skies there as well.
Here’s some information about the images above:
1. Waves of bright red airglow surrounding the southern Milky Way
2. The core of our galaxy above Uluru, Australia
3. A Milky Way arch during the May 10th solar storm last year
4. The southern sky above a waterfall
5. The Cygnus constellation and an ancient petroglyph in the US
6. A close-up of the center of the Milky Way
7. A moonlit sky over a glacier-fed lake
8. The Large Magellanic Cloud
9. Substorm activity during the May 10th solar storm
10. The Pleiades over a glacier-capped mountain
11. Rho Ophiuchi
12. The setting Milky Way over New Zealand’s highest peaks
13. Southern sky above red tarns
14. Zodiacal light in the Australian Outback
15. Comet G3 ATLAS from Mt John Observatory
16. A mosaic of the Southern Cross
17. The winter sky in New Zealand
18. Orion and a fresh snowfall
#youresa #astrophotography #nightsky #milkyway #canon #twanight #usa #california #astronomy #longexposure #capturetheatlas #astro #nightphotography #nightscaper #yourshotphotographer #darkskyshare #aurora
Uluru After Dark
This is a reprocessed version of a favorite image of mine, captured while visiting Uluru in winter over a year ago.
Although the composition was simple, the scene itself was surreal. As the light of dusk faded, the core of the Milky Way revealed itself, floating perfectly above the iconic landmark. At the center of our galaxy (highlighted in the annotation) lies a supermassive black hole, sitting some 26,000 light-years away from Earth. This region of the sky is also full of dramatic dust and star-forming regions, adding blues and reds to the already colorful sky.
This was a difficult image to obtain, as the national park closes shortly after sunset. By chance, we were visiting during the winter solstice, giving us a brief window of darkness before we had to leave the park. It wasn’t quite true night when I took this photo, but rather late astronomical twilight. This added some complexity to the processing, particularly in removing color casts from the twilight, but I’m happy with how the colors turned out.
The original image was awarded NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on 29 July 2024.
50mm panorama (sky + foreground)
#astrophotography #milkyway #nightsky #longexposure #capturetheatlas
Dark Sky Reserve
From the Mackenzie Basin, the stars shine brighter than in most places on Earth. Atop the summit of Mt John, you get a panoramic view of the surrounding mountains, lake, and township of Tekapo below.
In the autumn pre-dawn hours, the winter Milky Way stands vertically on the horizon, seen here floating above the lake. The atmosphere was also filled with bright green and yellow airglow, as it often is in New Zealand, adding a colorful hue to the sky.
#astrophotography #milkyway #newzealand #space #nightsky
The Heart of the Milky Way
While out under the night sky recently, I decided to do a quick stack of the center of the Milky Way.
In the April pre-dawn hours, this part of the sky reaches high overhead from the Southern Hemisphere, allowing you to capture all kinds of faint detail with just a short exposure.
The skies in New Zealand’s South Island are hard to beat. The lack of light pollution, high elevations, and cold, dry air provide an amazing view of our galaxy overhead.
Six minutes of data at 50mm (18 × 20s). No H-alpha filter used.
#astrophotography #milkyway #newzealand #space #nightsky
Mountain Village
In the depths of New Zealand’s winter, Mount Cook Village is often blanketed in snow. Nestled beneath the Sealy Range, its warm glow softly illuminates the surrounding mountains.
Above the village, the Milky Way core can be seen setting behind the peaks. The core is a prominent feature in our winter skies, with the bright zodiac constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius on either side. Although New Zealand often experiences strong airglow over the Alps, on this night there was very little. Visually, it was one of the darkest skies I had ever seen.
#astrophotography #milkyway #newzealand #nightsky #longexposure
Mount John Observatory
A few shots from the summit of Mount John, while chasing comet G3 Atlas last summer.
After the comet set early in the night, I spent a few hours shooting the observatory buildings against the night sky. In the summertime the Crux region of the Milky Way stands vertically out of the horizon, and the large Gum Nebula passes directly overhead.
#astrophotography #space #nightsky #milkyway #longexposure
Tioga Nights
This shot was one of the first images I took in the US, during my time in the High Sierras. The landscapes along Tioga Pass were surreal, with meadows and lakes surrounded by mountains and granite domes. We spotted this composition during the day and decided to return to late at night, as the core of the Milky Way would pass above the alpine lake.
This is a reprocessed version of the original image, as I felt I didn’t quite get the colors right the first time around.
#space #astrophotography #milkyway #nightsky #capturetheatlas
Mono Lake
While travelling through eastern California, another destination we visited was Mono Lake. This salty lake is famous for both its dark skies and its strange tufa formations. These tufas formed underwater as towers of limestone before emerging into view as the lake level dropped.
I had hoped to capture images across the lake with still reflections, but the day we visited had some of the strongest winds we experienced in the US. Instead, I found some tufas to the south and captured them with the Milky Way core behind.
#astrophotography #space #milkyway #california #capturetheatlas
Pleiades above Ancient Petroglyphs
Another of the petroglyph images I captured in the Eastern Sierras during my time in the US. Here, a group of small rock artworks sits beneath the Pleiades star cluster, seen rising in the background.
The age of this site is unknown, with estimates ranging from as recent as 900 years ago to as old as 7000 BC. Most of the petroglyphs in the area were weathered and had lost their contrast over time, but these smaller ones I found high up on a rock stood out clearly as I walked past them.
#astrophotography #space #california #nightsky #milkyway
Lunar Eclipse
Last night was the only lunar eclipse of 2026, and thankfully the skies in New Zealand stayed clear.
Using a 600mm lens, I captured the eclipse at several stages as Earth’s umbra (its inner shadow) passed across the surface of the Moon.
During totality, the night sky grew noticeably darker, and the Milky Way briefly came back into view.
#astrophotography #moon #nightsky #longexposure #lunareclipse
Widefield Deep Sky Images
A collection of images I’ve taken with my 135mm lens of a few deep-sky targets visible from New Zealand.
1: The Large Magellanic Cloud
The largest satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, located 160,000 light-years from Earth.
10 minutes of RGB + 30 minutes of Ha
2: The Pleiades
Known in New Zealand as Matariki, this group of young stars emits a faint blue glow. This comes from interstellar dust reflecting and scattering the blue starlight from the cluster.
1 hour of RGB on a crop sensor
3: Dust in Chamaeleon
In my nightscape images, I had often noticed a dusty patch of sky near the Southern Cross but didn’t know what it was. I decided to point my 135mm lens at the region to take a closer look, and this was the resulting image.
10 minutes of RGB
4: The Orion Nebula
Part of the wider Orion Molecular Complex, the Orion Nebula (and the adjacent Running Man Nebula) is seen here, surrounded by clouds of interstellar dust. This is one of the brightest nebulae in the night sky and perhaps the most photographed.
2 hours of RGB
#astrophotography #milkyway #nightsky #longexposure #space
