Thor’s Helmet

If you’re serious about becoming a better astrophotographer, like with anything, it’s all about practice. With every image you produce, you’ll learn something that makes your next image a little better. But life has a habit of getting in the way. You’ve had a long, tiring day at work – do you really want to…

NGC206 is an unusual object. It’s a cluster of stars, which in itself is not unusual at all… but it’s in ANOTHER GALAXY. The Andromeda Galaxy, to be precise. The fact that we can see it so clearly, two and a half million light-years away, boggles the mind. It’s that cluster of blue stars near…

Domey McDomeFace’s days are numbered, I’m afraid! Our property is up for sale, and hopefully its new owner will continue to use it to produce amazing images of their own. Meanwhile, I’m taking advantage of every clear night I can, while we’re still here. Here’s one of my favorite objects: “Thor’s Helmet” or NGC2359. Like…

Lit up by the bright star Rigel in Orion, the “Witch Head Nebula” is a cloud of dust that reflect blue a little bit more. Unlike emission nebulas that emit their own light from ionized gases, this just reflects the light of Orion – although there *is* some ionized Hydrogen in the background, which you’ll…

This solar cycle has been quite a bit more active than forecast. It motivated me to up my game a little bit with solar imaging; this is my first image with a “double stack” setup that results in narrower filtering on the Hydrogen-alpha emissions from the sun. Lots and lots of prominences, filaments, and sunspots…

I’ve imaged this one before, but for whatever reason I picked up way more detail on it last night. Part of it’s a better camera and better tracking on the telescope mount, but I think conditions may have just been really awesome last night. It’s not normal to have this many good nights for astrophotography…