On the other side of the Mount, the sky is dark and the conditions are perfect for keen astrophotographer Anne-Maree McComb. By day she takes care of the boarders in her daughter’s kennel, and by night she photographs the night sky.

And what amazing photos they are!

It was about five years ago that Anne-Maree started getting interested in this field, and she has accumulated quite a collection of telescopes, cameras, filters and whatever else is needed. She has an observatory (with plans to build a better one, with a roll-off roof) and owns the appropriate equipment for taking photos of the sun as well as the night sky.

A member of the local Night Sky Appreciation Society, Anne-Maree is also a member of the Astronomical Society of Victoria. She and others in the Astronomical Society kept each other sane during Covid with their livestream zooms.

It’s not observing the night sky with the naked eye that Anne-Maree is attracted to; it’s more the art of taking photos of the night sky that she’s interested in. “Cameras can see everything,” Anne-Maree said.

Each image that Anne-Maree produces is a composite of 200-300 stacked images – each with four to five minutes of exposure. And each photo is an extraordinary achievement. “I’ve started taking photos of dust clouds and I’m hooked on them at the moment,” she said. “Most people go for taking photos of nebulae, with all that colour. But dust clouds I love.”

At present, Anne-Maree is eyeing off the Cartwheel galaxy, which is (wait for it) 500 million light years away. Incredible! She was also pretty excited at the recent appearance of the Aurora, and spent the evening chasing shots of the lights near her house and over Cairn Curran.

If you think that Anne-Maree spends her nights freezing out in her observatory while fiddling with all her equipment, you can think again. It’s all done from the comfort of her lounge while running the show on her computer.

See all the pictures in the issue.

This article appeared in the Tarrangower Times, 7 June 2024.