Sara McAllister Photography

Sara McAllister Photography Photographing the SC Piedmont and anywhere else my travels take me. Shooting the sky from the ground and the ground from the sky. 🚁🔭📷🌄🌌

The Milky Way rising over the Hell Hole Road campground in the Francis Marion National Forest. It’s not the best night s...
08/05/2025

The Milky Way rising over the Hell Hole Road campground in the Francis Marion National Forest. It’s not the best night scape I’ve ever photographed but not bad considering I didn’t bring any of my normal gear for it. I guess I shouldn’t have trusted the cloudy weather forecast! 😅

Another aurora visible from the Carolinas! I drove up to Southern VA to get a better view of it since the Blue Ridge Par...
10/11/2024

Another aurora visible from the Carolinas! I drove up to Southern VA to get a better view of it since the Blue Ridge Parkway is closed due to damage from Helene. This panoramic view is from the Lover's Leap Overlook. One thing to note in this image is the Stable auroral red (SAR) arc to the right in the image.

I can’t believe I was able to image an aurora with my drone in South Carolina but here we are. This is a 3 panel panoram...
05/11/2024

I can’t believe I was able to image an aurora with my drone in South Carolina but here we are.

This is a 3 panel panorama made up of five bracketed images for each panel with exposures ranging from 1.3 to 8 seconds (Mavic 3 Cine).

The aurora last night was incredible and I never thought I’d be able to see it with the naked eye in South Carolina. Wha...
05/11/2024

The aurora last night was incredible and I never thought I’d be able to see it with the naked eye in South Carolina. What an absolute treat to see it! I got some iPhone images from my backyard, took a few in downtown Rock Hill, and then drove 30 minutes into the country to find some darker skies. Sadly, it had mostly faded by the time I got set up but I was able to get some faint sky glow in front of the Milky Way. An old, run down, barn that I had marked a while back as a possible foreground worked out nicely.

Rainbow CometThis one is just for fun. Comets move pretty quickly relative to the stars so multiple exposures of a comet...
02/09/2023

Rainbow Comet

This one is just for fun. Comets move pretty quickly relative to the stars so multiple exposures of a comet are going to show movement compared to the stars behind it. In this case, I’ve aligned the stars in 60 one minute exposures and, because I shoot each color separately, red, green, and blue appear separately, spread out from bottom to top.

I combined them in this way to pull out the stars in order to add them to the comet aligned image which had the stars removed to create the final image I shared a couple of days ago.

Comet Over JocasseeComets are difficult to shoot from my light polluted skies so I took a quick trip recently to one of ...
02/08/2023

Comet Over Jocassee

Comets are difficult to shoot from my light polluted skies so I took a quick trip recently to one of my favorite places, Lake Jocassee, in Devil’s Fork State Park, which has a great Northern view toward a darker area of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In this 35mm view, Comet ZTF is near Polaris and the glow on the right is from Brevard and Asheville, NC.

Because wide-field views of this comet are pretty underwhelming, this image is a composite combining the wide view of the comet with the image of the comet produced with my telescope to show it in more detail. These images were taken at the same time that my telescope exposures were taken, so I was able to match the size and position compared to surrounding stars exactly. If only we could see it at that brightness with the naked eye!

And here’s a bit of info about this comet for those who’d like to know: Its full name is C/2022 E3 (ZTF) which means it was first discovered in 2022 and was the third comet to be discovered in the first half of March. ZTF stands for the survey in which the comet was discovered (the Zwicky Transient Facility) by astronomers Bryce Colin and Frank Masci. While this comet doesn’t have an easy name, many have been referring to it as the “Green Comet” due to the green glow around the nucleus. Comets can emit a few different colors depending on their composition and, in this case, the green (which is less common) is emitted because its coma, the gas envelope surrounding the nucleus, contains a reactive compound called diatomic carbon (C2) and cyanogen.

Camera: R5
Lens: Canon 16-35mm f/4
Mount: Skywatcher Star Adventurer
20 x 90s exposures tracked for stars
Single 150s exposure for foreground

Comets are difficult to shoot from my light polluted skies so I took a quick trip recently to one of my favorite places,...
02/07/2023

Comets are difficult to shoot from my light polluted skies so I took a quick trip recently to one of my favorite places, Lake Jocassee, which has a great view toward a darker area of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This was my first time combining multiple frames to produce a comet image since I missed getting to shoot Neowise a couple of years back and it was more difficult than I had expected. That being said, this image isn’t perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it after wrestling with the processing for more hours than I’d care to admit.

And here’s a bit of info about this comet for those who’d like to know: Its full name is C/2022 E3 (ZTF) which means it was first discovered in 2022 and was the third comet to be discovered in the first half of March. ZTF stands for the survey in which the comet was discovered (the Zwicky Transient Facility) by astronomers Bryce Colin and Frank Masci. While this comet doesn’t have an easy name, many have been referring to it as the “Green Comet” due to the green glow around the nucleus. Comets can emit a few different colors depending on their composition and, in this case, the green (which is less common) is emitted because its coma, the gas envelope surrounding the nucleus, contains a reactive compound called diatomic carbon (C2) and cyanogen.

Friday, January 27th
Mount: EQ6R-Pro
Telescope: Askar FRA300 Pro
Camera: ASI1600mm Pro - Cooled
ZWO ASI filters
Guidescope: ZWO 30mm f/4
ZWO ASIair Plus
30 x 60s - Luminance
10 x 60s - R
10 x 60s - G
10 x 60s - B
1’ 10” total integrated time
30 darks
30 flats
30 bias
Edited in PixInsight and Photoshop

Carolina WrenThe little bid has a BIG ATTITUDE. Though they're small, I find that these little wrens are among the most ...
09/15/2022

Carolina Wren

The little bid has a BIG ATTITUDE. Though they're small, I find that these little wrens are among the most feisty birds that I see in my area…they're often noisily protesting my existence whether it be in my back yard or out in a field or forest. The state bird for my home state of South Carolina, they have quite a wide range that extends from parts of Mexico, including the Yucatan Peninsula, up to the Great Lakes region. One interesting thing to note is that if you do hear a loud wren, it's a male. Males and females have different songs and bonded pairs (they mate for life) will sing together, the male with his loud part and the female with her quieter chattering.

Blue-grey GnatcatcherFlitting quickly around dense brush, these little birds are a challenge to photograph. This one was...
09/14/2022

Blue-grey Gnatcatcher

Flitting quickly around dense brush, these little birds are a challenge to photograph. This one was accommodating enough to perch in the open for a moment. I really need to get a photo of a breeding male because their angry black eyebrows are hilarious.

Blue GrosbeakI found this gorgeous male grosbeak and his lady friend at a wildlife management area not too far from my h...
09/13/2022

Blue Grosbeak

I found this gorgeous male grosbeak and his lady friend at a wildlife management area not too far from my home. I’m not an early morning person but it’s really lovely to occasionally get into the woods before the sun is up to see what beauty there is to find. There are wonders all around us if we open our eyes to them.

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