Saguaro, Great Horned Owl and Comet A3

Check out the great horned owl on the saguaro looking at me, looking at the Comet A3

Venus, Saguaro, and Comet A3

 

September 11th Memorial

 On our most recent visit with our daughter in New York, New York - the September 11th Memorial.

Our Moon (UV/IR Filtered Out)

Our very own satellite the Moon can be very beautiful when Ultraviolet and Infrared are filtered out allowing much more detail to come out. 9.25" F/25 SCT, UV/IR Cut Filter, Barlow 2.5x, ASI533 RGGB, 32°F. 448/700 frames stacked, aligned and wavelet sharpened.

Saturn & Satellites Close to Opposition

Saturn and four of it's many satellites three days (20240905) before opposition. Nothing thrills people more than seeing Saturn live in a eyepiece. The only thing better is solar total eclipse. The satellites are seen as only specks in the photograph so zoom in!

From left to right: Dione, Saturn, Tethys, Rhea and finally the big satellite Titan. 

Real Time Lightning - Not Condensed or Sped-Up

July 25th we had a Monsoon lightning event with what seemed to be never ending lightning...

 

NGC5430 Bumble Bee Galaxy (my name for it)

 NGC 5430 is an Spiral Galaxy located in the constellation of Ursa Major (Big Bear, same as the Big Dipper Constellation). NGC 5430's distance from Earth is 129,989,624.33 light years. It is TINY to try to photograph and is only 12 magnitude in brightness. Immensely dimmer than stars seen with the unaided eye. Could we actually call this the Bumble Bee Galaxy!

The Owl Nebula

 The Owl (face) Nebula is a planetary nebula approximately 2,030 light years away in the constellation Ursa Major - the same constellation that holds the Big Dipper. Estimated to be about 8,000 years old, it is approximately circular in cross-section with a faint internal structure. It was formed from the outflow of material from the stellar wind of the central star. What that means is this little guy is very pretty to look at. To take the photo I had to take 100 45 second light frames while star guiding with guiding software. If I didn't use a separate guide scope the imperfections as tiny as they are, would make the picture look like I took it from a rock invested road.

NGC 4565 (IC3543) Edge On Needle Galaxy

NGC 4565 is known as the Needle Galaxy or IC 3543.  It is an edge-on spiral galaxy about 30 to 50 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It lies close to the North Galactic Pole and has a visual magnitude of approximately 10. To be seen without optical add magnitude 6 would be necessary. It is known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile. NGC 4565 has at least two satellite galaxies, one of which is interacting with it. Can both satellite galaxies, they are in my picture. It has a population of roughly 240 globular clusters, more than the Milky Way.

Messier 101

Messier 101 (M101) This bad boy face-on galaxy is 170 light years wide and its distance is a mere 21 million light years away. This galaxy is much like the renowned Andromedia Galaxy. You may remember an earlier photo of M101 I posted about a year ago which included an exploding supernova. That supernova is no longer visible as the star is dying and a goner.

My picture this year is at FL1470 as last years was FL 517. This year I took a stack of 109 frames each 30 seconds of exposure. With 30 seconds I include guiding in the process to ensure the scope mount does not drift too far off target. The final stack had the stars removed and several Generalized Hyperbolic Histogram stretches applied. Finally, the stars were standard histogram stretched and accurately placed back on the GHS stretched stack. The results are below:

 

Living in Dr Suess' Whoville - Agava

 Agava plants in the front yard make you feel like you are living in Dr. Suess' Whoville. The Agave plants also called Century Plants (because they were falsely thought to live to 100 years), will bloom after 10 to 20 years. The flowering stalk can grow to 35 feet tall and grow and will bloom for three to four months. After the blooming is complete the plant will die and Whoville will sadly vanish back in to fantasy land...

Desert Ugly - I Don't Think So...

 The Sonoran desert was in full gorgeous bloom today on a 5.4 mile hike in upper 80°F

2024 Solar Eclipse - Arkansas

Here is a timelapse of the 2024 Solar Eclipse as seen from Flippin Arkansas. You can see two sunspots on the sun. The solar prominences were intensely red in color and a gorgeous site to see. Each frame is three minutes apart until the total phase when they are 3 seconds apart. And then operator error occurred and I did not take into account a meridian flip even though no tripod collision was possible. So I was only able to capture about 1/3rd of total. The photos get misaligned until I took over manual control and flipped the axis. Visually this was the most beautiful eclipse I have observed to date.

 

Tadpole Nebula & Bode's & Cigar Galaxy

This beauty is the Tadpole Nebula (IC 410) with a star cluster (NGC 1893) right in front of it. The Tadpole is about mere 12,0100 light years away.

 Bode's Galaxy M81 (lower) and the Cigar Galaxy M82(upper) are gravitationally locked into each other. Both of them are about 11.8 million Light Years away.

NGC0224 M31 Andromeda Rephotographed

Winter Wonderspace

 Some of you may have heard of the Horsehead Nebula. Unlike some nicknames of astro objects this one is completely obvious as to the why part... And as always here you go with the distance - the light from this beauty takes 1,375 years to reach us. The light from the red nebula comes from the bright stars behind it ionizing the hydrogen gas. The star Malach is so bright it is casting quite a halo!

This beautiful blue canvas of planetary nebula should be familiar to alot of us. It is the Pleiades star cluster or sometimes called the Seven Sisters star cluster. You can see it with the naked eye but depending on the light pollution in your area you may be able to only see four or five of the stars. Six is usually the maximum number of stars. This bad girl is only 444 light years of distance between us.

This is Andromeda and I have displayed it in the past but I try to get a better shot every time. This one is also visible to the naked eye if your li8gh pollution isn't too bad. So this one is 152,000 light years wide but only 2.5 million lights distance from us :) It is considered a sister galaxy to our very own galaxy.  By the way can see two smudges in the picture - those two sister galaxies to Andromeda.

Recognize this nighttime dominator. And for distance it is on average 1.2 Light Seconds away!

This NGC 2238 but also very appropriately nicknamed the Rosette Nebula and it is 130 light years in diameter but 5,000 light years away.

This old standby the Orion Nebula M42 I have taken so many times but again I try to do better every time. 1,344 light years distance and 24 light years in diameter.

Some of my favorite Life Shots

Two Arizona icons in one photo - Gorgeous sunrises and saguaro cacti

A Harris Hawk giving me the eye

Mount Hood from the window of a 737

A Hood River Valley tree withstanding all that with enduring strength

A Oregon lighthouse withstanding all that with enduring strength

Winter does occasionally visit the desert

Floating Catalina Mountains above a snow covered Sonoran Desert

Snow covered Sonoran Desert Sunrise

Arches NP Utah - This photo stands as one of my favorites as the crowd at Arches National Park was completely bewildered as to why I turned my back on the Arch in front of them. The tree was completely outside the arch but somehow found a way to grow such that the arch framed it perfectly. As I took this photo the crowd completely missed the amazing beauty that nature had offered up to them. If only we would sometimes look beyond the obvious. Dyslexia is described as a disability. I have found it be a pain when playing cards and dice games and simply trying to read or type at a normal speed... However, I have learned to relook at things several times to make sure I got it accurate. This constant reevaluation of what I see gave me the skills necessary to see what the crowd completely missed on that day At Arches. Disability sometimes yes, sometimes no...

Mount Saint Helens August of 2005- My first attempt at good composition and an eye for taking a picture that matched imagination of the final picture on the wall. Also, yes I intentionally gave it a painting like feel in post processing.

Deschutes River Valley silhouetted by Mount Hood right after a beautiful rain storm - August of 2004 this is a really bad photo but I love it because it was Angie's idea to stop the car and take the photo. I wish I would have taken a better photo,. However I learned a lot about photography on this one. So I am very nostalgic about this one. Angie thank you for endorsing this one of what would turn out to be over 700,000 photos later