Celestial Seagull

FINALLY a Seagull that doesn’t steal your food at the beach and poop on your head! In the waning months of Spring I realized that I hadn’t imaged the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) in basically the entirety of my Astrophotography journey. Three nights of collecting photons that started moving toward us when we had finally …

A look back in time – Messier 16 from July 2021

To be perfectly fair, every bit of astrophotography is looking back into time. Even the moon is over one light second away, the sun 8-ish light minutes. On average light (and radio) takes about 43 minutes to get from the Earth to Jupiter. On average radio signals travelling at the speed of light from Earth …

Mythbusting: Broadband imaging from INSIDE city limits

Myth: You cannot image from inside cities because the light pollution will make things impossible. TL;DR: Modern software and filter technology is game-changing for imaging in the city, even for broadband targets! Long form: Let’s take a bit of a deep dive into this. For many, many years it has been accepted truth that you …

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Ok, as galaxies go, Andromeda is right next door at only 2.5 million light years. Light that reached my 61mm telescope earlier this year left shortly after the earliest humans learned how to use fire. In playing with some new software that uses AI and machine learning to reduce deviation due to the atmosphere I …