10/26/24

 This past week I decided to head out to Milford Lake and see if I could catch the comet with some nice scenery instead of where I took it before.  It was a lovely evening and the sky was very clear and I could see the Milky Way overhead so I decided to capture that as well.  When I got home and was looking at my photos I saw that I had captured the comet in these photos as well which was a very nice surprise.  This is a stack of 6 images to reduce noise and improve clarity.  The comet was quite a bit fainter now and could not be seen by the naked eye, I had to use my phone on Night Sight to find where to point my camera to capture it.  It is Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas and is heading away from us on it's 800 year journey around the sun.  

10/8/22

 A couple of weeks ago now I went out and took some images of the Milky Way core.  It's the center of the Milky Way galaxy and has a lot of detail and beauty in it which makes it the subject of photos.  This is my first attempt at getting a good image of it.  

There were some difficulties because my chosen spot to photograph it had much more light pollution than I was expecting and also the moon was out to the west and causing even more light pollution.  It was windy out as well so I was not able to get as many good images as I wanted.  This is a stack of 6 images.  You use stacked images to take out some of the noise created while using long exposures and high ISO levels in the camera.  I then watched several videos to learn some techniques to bring out the detail in what I captured and this is the result after I tried those techniques.  Not the best one ever, but I was happy with my first effort. The glow at the bottom is the light pollution I am talking about.

1/16/16

Posting a bit late today as I was out at Konza Prairie for the beginning of today.  It's turned into a rather nice day so far, not as cold as I expected though I think we are in for that tomorrow.  Since I was out at Konza I decided to post an image that I took there a while back.  I shot this one evening after a meeting on a very clear but very windy night.  I was pleased that I got a clear shot because the exposure time was around 20 seconds.  The light on the grass came from the porch light on the main house where we were having the meeting and this is the view up the hill from there of the Milky Way.

11/9/15

Another lovely day here in Kansas.  I was out on Konza Prairie this past Tuesday for a meeting.  I had my camera along and decided to try some star shots after the meeting was over.  It was such a clear evening and the Milky Way was quite visible but it was pretty windy out and I was doing some fairly long exposures.  This one was 15 seconds and I tried to protect it while it was taking the photo.  I must have done OK as it did not look all blurry so I was quite happy.  I liked this image with the silhouette of the Flint Hills.  The light is from the city of Manhattan.