When you need to run dark calibration frames on your astro camera but won’t quite get to -20°C in your apartment, you stick it in the freezer…

I will be back at The Monarch next Thursday selling prints of my astrophotography as well as taking orders for bespoke wall art. Hope to see you there!

Well, I’m officially furloughed. If anyone wants some video work done, family photos, or professional headshots, let me know. I’d guess this will go on at least for a week. On a positive note, I lit a jet and hangar for the first time last night. It was a fun shoot.

Updated Crescent Nebula, now with almost six hours of data. Oddly enough though, it doesn’t seem a ton better than my one-hour version. Maybe I need to start going out to dark sky areas for narrowband again.

Hubble Palette image of the Wizard Nebula. This is 16 hours of data and the Sulfur II data (red) was still super noisy, and the Oxygen III (blue) wasn’t a lot better. I did a lot of manual blurring of noise to at least get to this point, but at the cost of a lot of detail. Probably another 8-16 hours of SII/OIII is needed to make this image look good 😩

The Andromeda Galaxy has a special place in my heart and history doing astrophotography. It was one of the first DSOs (deep space objects) I noticed in my landscape photos, and the first DSO I really went after to photograph using a tracking mount. It’s really the target I learned on, shooting it at least five times (I thought it was seven) before I made a result I was somewhat happy with. That said, even that fifth attempt felt kind of “meh,” and I haven’t tried again since November 2022. Well, I decided to go after it again, this time as a four-panel mosaic with not just broadband data, but narrowband hydrogen alpha too! The final image is 84 megapixels, and represents 21.83 hours of integration time. The first image is this mosaic, followed by a split view between my last attempt at Andromeda (top) and this new one (bottom). Then, just for comparison, the full image from my last attempt and finally the very first attempt at shooting Andromeda. Suffice to say, I’ve come a long way, both in gear and technique.

I’m so sorry to all the Jedi. I swear, all I wanted was a cheese pizza…

One of the music videos we shot with the @bandofmidamerica last year was nominated for a regional Emmy Award! You can see the video at https://www.dvidshub.net/video/942055/new-colossus

The view of those mountains never gets old. Made it home safe and sound. Good to be back. This should be my last trip for at least a month; it will be nice to stay out for a few weeks.