Lithgow Blast Furnace Astromeet 17th June

Join me for a night shooting the stars at the Lithgow Blast Furnace. Despite its town centre placement and surrounding street lighting, this exceptional Astrophotography location has been a favorite of many astrofiles for a long time.

The entire park is a monument to Australia's first iron and steel smelting industries, and the 19th century industrial buildings and surrounding artifacts making up the furnace site provide a wonderful foreground to the rising and setting Milky Way, including the capture of the Milky Way as it passes over the open roof of the furnace building.

While on site, we will have plenty of time to reprise our Astro skills going through the basics about safety, etiquette, how to find the Milky Way, how to capture it, how to look for a unique composition and some advanced capture techniques. We will also cover some basic astroscape lighting, and how to manage harsh lighting projected by nearby street lighting and residual lighting from the town itself.

We will shoot the Milky Way and Star Trails from sunset through to roughly 1AM. 

NOTE: The meeting time is 5PM on Saturday evening and we will shoot through to early Sunday morning.

Meeting Time: Saturday 17th June 2023, 5:00PM 

Galactic Core Visible - 18:27 til 05:34 

Sunset - 16:58 

Weather Dependent - This is a Weather Dependent event. If heavy rain or storms are forecast we will cancel or postpone the event to a later date. We will still run the event if it is cloudy, as we can have some light painting fun around Blast Furnace Park if the skies fail to clear for us. 

• Night shooting safety
• Locating the Milky Way
• Quick Milky Way settings
• Focusing in the dark
• Night shooting etiquette
• Looking for the Unique
• Managing Lens Fog

• MOST IMPORTANT - Working Headlamp or torch (no mobile phone torches please!)
• A camera with Manual controls and interchangeable lenses
• Lenses suitable for astrophotography (between 12mm & 24mm preferably with f/2.8 or faster)
• Remote shutter for camera
• Sturdy Tripod
• A small towel to cover your camera
• Warm Layered clothing, beanie or other warm headwear, and warm socks/shoes or boots
• Firm and grippy footwear is strongly recommended as there are a number of trip hazards around the site at night