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

Refracted Moon

 When the Moon is high enough and the clouds are high enough and thin enough! The refraction of Moon light was absolutely gorgeous... Yes I had to blow out the Moon to get the color in the clouds.

Stansbury Mountains Tooele Utah

The Stansbury Mountains as seen from Tooele Utah

 

Palisade on the Oregon Trail

 The Oregon Trail meets the Columbia River in the Columbia River Gorge and is briefly accessible before a modern freeway and highway plowed right over it. In complete Oregon fashion it was raining when I took my Palisade on this short section so I can say I drove on the Oregon Trail...

On a Whim the North Rim

 Coming back from a long road trip I decide to avoid some mountain snow and ended up heading for the Grand Canyon North Rim. That is the way most of my solo road trips go - explore if it looks good! The deciduous trees were gorgeous yellow as a bonus.

Annular Solar Eclipse

 So I was in Beaverton, Oregon for the October 14, 2023 Annular Solar Eclipse and per Oregon weather law it was cloudy. However, the clouds were thick enough to protect our eyes and cameras and thin enough to actual see and photograph it.

Jupiter Again

 

Jupiter & Saturn

Planet Night Jupiter

Right to Left moons of Jupiter: Europa, Ganymede, Io

Saturn

The One Everybody Wants to See SATURN!

Okay here it is the planet Saturn. Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest planet in our solar system. Adorned with thousands of beautiful ringlets, Saturn is unique among the planets. It is not the only planet to have rings – made of chunks of ice and rock – but none are as spectacular or as complicated as Saturn's. Like fellow gas giant Jupiter, Saturn is a massive ball made mostly of hydrogen and helium.

 

Andromeda Galaxy M21 & Sister Galaxy NGC 224

 Andromeda has a diameter of about 152,000 light-years and is approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth. I kind of blew out the center and work harder to get a better image

NGC6992 - Eastern Veil Nebula

 The Eastern Veil Nebula is at a distance of 2400 light years, and is is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust powered by a super nova. The delicate beauty of this nebula masks the explosive power of the super nova that created this beautiful wonder.

Arizona Century Mark - Not

While the some of the nation is basking in Arizona style temperatures here is a summary of our days of summer heat:

So we had at most 55 days in a row of 100° F or greater. We had 63 days total of of 100° F or greater and 11 days of 110° F or over. So it looks like we will most likely not reach the Century Mark this year.

We definitely are not used to double digit humidity

M20 Trifid Nebula & M21 Webb's Cross Cluster

The Trifid, meaning three lobed - I don't know about you but three lobed is not what I see!?! NGC 6514 (M20) is 4,240 Light years from my telescope. The nebulosity is lit up by the energy of  a star in middle of the dark veins. The group of stars in the Lower right of the photo is M21 Webb's Cross open star cluster. I purposely toned down the stars as to not blow out the Trifid. Webb's Cross is actually closer to us than Trifid at 3,930 light years. I took this photo on August 5-6, 2023. I took 189 frames lasting 30 seconds each. The air was pretty turbulent so I had to dump 98 frames, keeping only 91 for the stack. I will ultimately make another run at this beautiful nebula when the seeing conditions improve in the coming weeks.

 

Massive Sunspot 3354

Massive Sunspot 3354 is so large you could fit 10 earths side by side into it.

Left half Hydrogen Aplha Right Half White Light Filter 99.9% 2023-06-29 12:27

 

M17 NGC 6618 The Swan Nebula

The swan or Omega Nebula is about 6,000 light years from my telescope. However it is 15 light years wide! What is amazing is we are seeing it edge on can you if we saw it face on it would be 40 light years in diameter! NGC 6618 lies embedded in the nebulosity and causes the gases of the nebula to shine due to radiation from these hot, young stars. 2023-06-27 10:00 PM to 2023-06-28 1:00 AM 133 frames taken, 63 thrown out for turbulence. 

 

NGC6611 M16 The Eagle Nebula

 The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse emission nebula, about 5700 light-years distant and is actually 55 by 70 light years across. In the middle is the so called pillars of creation, as new stars are forming there.

5340 total exposure time in seconds, Camera cooled to 0°C, 30 seconds average exposure time, 178 of 247 frames processed/stacked.

M8\NGC6523 Lagoon Nebula

M8 is the opening act for Nebula season, so I grabbed it last night. The light took 5,200 years to reach my camera. The massive stars embedded within the nebula give off enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation, ionizing the gas and causing it to shine. It is low on the horizon for most of the United States and therefor subject to atmospheric turbulence. For Tucson it is low but not too bad (34 images rejected for turbulence).,210 frames of 30 seconds = 1 hour 45 minutes of exposure.

ASTAP for plate solving, mount sync, and frame stacking, Siril for histogram stretching and color verification, StarNet for star equalization, DarkTable for final composition and copyright.

 

Evening Star - More like Evening Planet

I often get asked what is that immensely bright star? It is often called the "Morning Star" or the "Evening Star" but, it is a planet! The planet Venus - it is not a star at all... The word planet comes out of Greek meaning to wanderer. It is the brightest celestial object out there right now - third brightest after the Sun and Moon. Here is what Venus looks like through my 9 1/4 inch wide telescope. All we can see is a thick, toxic atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide and thick, yellowish clouds of sulfuric acid that trap heat, causing a runaway greenhouse effect. Surface temperatures on Venus are about  900°F – hot enough to melt lead. Venus has crushing air pressure at its surface, 90 times that of Earth – similar to the pressure of a mile below the ocean on Earth. The clouds are so dense all we get is a very bland picture. Since, Venus is semi-close the horizon the view is quite turbulent. To obtain this picture I have to take over 2000 frames and then pick out only the ones that are lucky enough to be taken the during times when the atmosphere is settled down. Hence they call this "lucky imaging". I have an semi-automated process that make it way easier than it sounds.😁 By the way the light takes 6 minutes and 9 seconds to get to us. 

M101 & Super Nova Death of a Star

The supernova (SN 2023ixf) was formed when a star, much more massive than our own sun, ran out of fuel to burn in its core. Since the core could not support the mass of the star any more, the star collapsed on itself and created a gigantic explosion. This particular super nova is 21 million light years away. So this star began it's death implosion 21 million years ago...  The arrow in my picture points to SN 2023ixf which is near the M101 Pinwheel galaxy.

 

NGC5194 AKA M51 NGC5195

 The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a or NGC 5194, lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. It is about 31 million light-years away from Earth and 76,900 light years in diameter. The companion galaxy is NGC 5195. (This first light for my Hyperstar)

2022 Starr Ridge PWS Weather Summary

 

We had a 19 day streak out of the 56 total days of 100° F 

Also on one day we had temps vary by 47°F and one day where the temps only varied 4° F

The Dew Point makes the monsoon so easy to identify - blue bands

If it is going to rain it will probably be after 2 o'clock to 5 o'clock seem like a good bet.

A nice breeze in the afternoon is common as well as at least one gust in the 30's MPH a month

This graph tells what wind direction is favored by month

This graph tells us which wind direction is promenate for any wind speed

This graph tells us which direction the wind came throughout the year

Here we can see as an example on any given day the wind travelled from 114.2 miles away

Also on any given day only 1.96% of the time with there be no wind at all