12/07/24

 On Wednesday, the moon and Venus were fairly close together in the early evening sky.  I had to go out and capture them and share.  Fortunately that evening was unseasonably warm as well to make photo taking more pleasant.  😊

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.  

10/19/24

 So, this week I was able to see a couple of cool things.  The first was this, Comet C 2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, what a name huh.  😄 It has to do with when it was discovered and who it was discovered by.  I captured it on Tuesday and I was trying to do some different types of processing which was not working for various reasons so I finally ended up with this image.  You could see it with your naked eye but it was quite faint but still very cool.

  

09/19/24

 I had forgotten about the eclipse till I was outside the other evening, 9/17, and was reminded so I grabbed my camera and took a few photos.  This is the first (left) and last one I took.  It never changed very much in about 15 minutes time.  It was still interesting and fun to capture.  Wish I hadn't blown out the bright part in the first image so badly.  😏

05/16/24

 I captured this image this past Friday evening.  The Northern Lights were visible across the United States even as far south as Florida which was quite amazing.  When I took this image, you could not see them in my area with the naked eye.  I was doing Night Capture images on my phone and 10 second exposures on my actual camera to be able to pick it up in any detail.  This image is from my actual camera.  The color has not been touched, I used various brightening techniques that I have learned through doing various astrophotography images to bring out the aurora more.  I could tell while I was taking the photos that I was getting something but it was quite interesting to see just how much was captured.  We didn't have a lot of the vivid red that some people saw or the curtain effect that I have seen in Minnesota but it was still pretty cool to see and capture.  

04/27/24

 Today's image is another astrophotography one that I have been trying to learn and get better at.  I have been working with this image off and on since I took it on the 4th of this month.  This is Comet 12p/Pons-Brooks that has been able to be seen with binoculars or a telescope if you know where to look.  When I captured it, it was visible shortly after sunset in the constellation of Aries and somewhat near Jupiter, which appears as a star in the image due to the longer exposure.  I used a 70mm lens as using anything larger made it very difficult to spot due to the comet being incredibly dim to the naked eye.  This is a combination of 12 ten second exposures, which were stacked and then processed in my photo program and also using a gradient extractor due to the uneven light from the horizon.  It's not perfect and I have a lot to learn but I was fairly happy with what i was able to get.  If you look closely you can see faint bits of the tail extending out, I wish I had been able to pull out more of that but the quality was degrading.  I am not sure if the comet is still visible, it was getting lower on the horizon every day.  I should have captured it in January at least.  At this point in time it was too low too get very many images before it was gone.

04/09/24

 On Monday, 4/8, there was an eclipse of the sun over North America.  We were not in totality but I still went out to capture it as we got to around 85 to 87 percent.  I would have really liked a chance at total but from the news it sounded that to travel would be fairly crazy with all the people trying to do the same thing.  Even at 85% it was cool to see and experience as it got cooler and darker out.  This is my composite of what I was able to capture.  It started a bit earlier than I thought so I missed the very beginning.  I shot this sequence with my camera on my telescope. 

04/06/24

 A few weeks ago I captured this image one night.  Over several days I worked on processing it because it is an image you can't just look up into the sky and see.  This is the Flame Nebula which is near the left most star, Alnitak, in the Belt of Orion.  Below the Flame Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula can also be seen, sort of.  😉 This is a stack of 15 images and I learned while doing this that I need a lot more.  😁  The Flame I was able to bring out fairly well with processing but the Horsehead is fainter and did not work as well.  With more images to work with you capture more and more light and detail.  I will try this one again next winter when Orion is higher in the sky again.  It's getting dark way too late these days too which makes it difficult as well.

03/30/24

 Today's image is the second one I took with my telescope.  I was practicing with different eyepieces and the moon was a good subject to use during the day when I could see what I was doing.  😊

03/23/24

 I bought myself a telescope late last year after much deliberation on what type to buy.  Ironically, since I bought it, on days when I had the time, it was usually cloudy or really cold.  In preparation for the upcoming solar eclipse, I bought a sheet of sun filter foil and made a filter for the scope and was testing it out this past Sunday.  I also used my camera on the scope successfully for the first time as well and took this image of the sun.  I liked how you could see some sun spots, one up near the very top and then a group of 3 down in the lower part.

7/1/23

 The moon and Venus were fairly close to each other last week and I was able to see and capture it.  I had gone out to bring in the Oriole's jelly so as not to attract any animals to it during the night and saw this sight.  I liked this image with a bit of tree branches in it.

3/2/23

 It's a Palindrome Number day!  😃  I took this image a couple of weeks ago now.  I processed it a couple of different ways and had a hard time deciding which I liked better as they both had pros and cons.  Both were stacked from 9 images.  One I basically just processed like a normal photo and this one I did the techniques used by some astrophotographers.  I think this image had a bit more detail in it.  This is the Orion Nebula which is located in the Sword of Orion when you are looking at it.  It can be seen with the naked eye if you are in a fairly dark location.  I took this image using my Pentax K3 III camera with a manual 300mm lens and astrotracer which allows me to take the 10 second exposures that I did to not blur them from the movement of the stars during that time.

12/15/22

 Today's image is one that I am quite happy with how it turned out and it took me a while to do.  I took this image back in mid November but I needed to process it and it took me several nights of tweaking to get a result I was happy with and watching YouTube videos for tips on those tweaks.  This is the Pleiades, also known as The Seven Sisters which is an open star cluster.  In dark areas this cluster can be seen with the naked eye but it can be fairly faint.  I took this image using a 300mm lens and my camera on it's astrophotography setting.  I shot 9 images at F11, 20sec, 3200 ISO which were then stacked together to get rid of some noise in a program called Deep Sky Stacker.  I then worked on it in my Photo program to bring out the gas clouds around the stars.  I am pretty pleased for my first effort on bringing those clouds out, how this turned out.  I am looking forward to redoing my Orion Nebula image this winter.

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.

5/17/22

 On Sunday evening there was a lunar eclipse occurring.  I only photographed the first part of it due to I have photographed a full one before and I am getting older and needed to get to bed as it was a work night.  😄  I only had time to work with one photo but I was rather pleased with it.  When viewed large especially, you can see stars in the image as well.  Not a sight you can usually photograph in one exposure with a full moon.  I thought the color turned out well too.  I'll have to share my sequence one day after I have time to process the images I took.

4/9/22

 I am rather happy with today's image even though it didn't work out quite like I wanted.  I went out last week to try an Orion Nebula image.  I wanted to get several images to stack which allows you to reduce the grain.  It was a windy evening and I only got 2 shots out of the 8 I took to come out fairly well, the others had a bit of elongation in the stars due to slight wind movement even though I was using a really heavy duty overkill tripod.  This image is actually the very first one I took and I ended up not stacking it with the other, I just processed this one and was pleased with the results.  The nebula can be, sort of, seen by eye, it's why Orion's belt looks somewhat fuzzy.  I was really pleased and amazed by what I could capture with my camera.  I shot this at f13, 500mm, for 40 seconds at ISO 400.  As I have mentioned, my camera has had an update which allows it to track the movement of the stars by computation from the sensor to not get star trailing in long exposures required to get images like this.  I hope to try again for more images to stack to get more detail and less grain and a closer image but may have to wait for this one until next winter when Orion is back in the sky in a better position.

4/2/22

 This is another of the test shots I did with my new camera update.  This is a stacked image of the Pleiades constellation, also known as the 7 Sisters.  I took 4 images and stacked them together to get a clearer image without so much "noise" that results in low light images.  I shot this with my 300mm at 40 seconds each image at F11 and 800 ISO.  When viewed large you can see rays coming off the larger stars so I was pretty pleased with how this turned out.

3/26/22

 Today's image is a bit different for me.  My camera got a firmware update which allows me to capture the night sky in long exposures without using a GPS addition.  It does it with the sensor of the camera.  It's very involved but very cool.  If you do long exposures without GPS help or without additional help the stars can start to trail and not look round any longer.    Before it got all cloudy and rainy I have been experimenting.  One of the few things I like about winter is that I get to see the constellation of Orion.  This is an image I made of that that I thought turned out pretty well.  This was a 25 second exposure.  I am still working on lenses and other issues for more telephoto type images that I will be sharing when I am happy with them.  This image is definitely best viewed large by clicking on it.

11/22/21

 Today's image is a type I don't share often but I was pleased with how it turned out.  I meant to share it last week but, time got away from me..  This was a view from my yard in Kansas of the Venus and Moon Conjuction event on November 7.  When viewed large I was able to capture some crater definition in the moon.  I liked the capture in the blue hour of the evening.

10/17/20

 Today's images and post is a bit different.  Mars has been visible in the sky for awhile now.  Last month there was one evening when it and the moon were fairly close together so I was able to capture both.  You can see the reddish tint to Mars even though it's rather small in the image.

This image is a complimentary image I was able to get this week.  It's a bit disappointing as it is a phone shot and I guess I still need to learn how to use it because when I changed the mode I shot in, it did not give me a RAW file to work with, just a low grade jpeg.  Anyway, this is the moon and Venus from Wednesday morning.