Promoting WA’s Astrophotographers

PAGE 19 Promoting Western Australia’s Astrophotographers

2022 SUMMER EDITION By Zoé Fraussen

There’s always something new happening at the Perth Observatory, new tours, new volunteers, sometimes even new telescopes, and now a new exhibition space. If you have visited the Perth Observatory before you may recall the long corridor that leads from the foyer to our back lawn. These walls used to be donned with our star adoption certificates, Government Astronomer photos, and some

beautiful astrophotography pieces for sale. Well, all of these have been moved to the corridor that leads to our new classroom (see Project Managers report for more details) and this hallway is our new exhibition space. It’s not much but we are proud to have an area where we can showcase new and exciting things to our visitors. We will now have a new exhibition in this space every 3 months, which happily coincides with the release of this newsletter, how fortuitous. We are kicking off this new space with a travelling exhibition from the Astrofest Astrophotography competition. This astrophotography competition has been running for

13 years, the last 3 being curated by Astrophotographer and Perth Observatory volunteer Roger Groom. We were lucky enough to work with Roger to showcase the finalists for 2022 in our new exhibition space. We also had the amazing opportunity to host an opening event for the artists involved.

On Thursday the 15th of December the Observatory hosted an extremely talented group of Astrophotographers who came up to the Observatory to discuss techniques, locations, software usage, and all things photography.

The night was kicked off with an introduction from Roger, and then a talk from 2022 Astrofest Astrophotography Best Astro Photo and Best Deep Sky Photo winner Carlos Taylor. Carlos spoke of his journey in astrophotography and the equipment used to take the winning photo. Roger led a Q&A with Carlos and the other photographers chimed in with insightful questions of their own.

The night was finished with hot drinks and canapes and a walk around the exhibition. If you want to come along and see the exhibition yourself, it will be open until the end of February. You can visit during the week from 10 am - 4 pm, or on a Sunday from 1-4 pm or come along on a night sky tour. For more information on the Astrofest Astrophotography Competition visit the website

One thing that became very obvious over the night was how amazing the astrophotography community is. It was great to see the photographers finally meet face-to-face people they knew only from online groups. It was a lovely night filled with passionate people who came together with no rivalry after a competition.