Mark Appleton, Clear Skies (May theme: The night sky)

Taken at Yenyenning Lakes, Western Australia. Yenyenning Lakes is located in the West Australia Wheatbelt region near the country town of Beverley and is around 2 hour’s drive east of Perth. At the time of taking this image, the moon had just set over the horizon behind me and therefore the night was very dark and due to the location, the light pollution was minimal. I illuminated the branch with a torch to add some more foreground interest. This image is stitched together with 3 vertical images, each captured on a 14mm lens at 20 seconds, f2.8 and ISO 6400.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.