Fuzzy Photographs, Kirkwood, MO (2026)

03/15/2025

Before I owned a telescope, the first picture I ever took of space was a lunar eclipse. It was April 15, 2014 and despite getting a pretty decent picture without knowing what I was doing, the thing I remember more than anything was this very pronounced, inescapable, unsettling feeling in my chest. It's the same feeling I would end up getting for years and years when I pulled down the first frame of a galaxy, or a nebula, or a planet, or whatever. Like, WHAT IS THIS AND WHAT IS HAPPENING?! That primal fear can't be juked, and it's wonderfully humbling.

It all happened again early Friday morning, and hopefully some of you got to share in it! Despite the wispy clouds that fluttered throughout the 1ish hour of totality locally, it was a remarkable event. It's been quite a while since we had a good (clear) full lunar eclipse with the moon high in the sky - and for that reason, this is the best I've done since I nabbed my first one 11 years ago. Enjoy!

Scope: 8" Orion Astrograph
Mount: CGEM
Camera: Olympus Air A01
Control: Custom Python script over WiFi
Exposures: 168 x 1/6s @ ISO 1600

04/21/2024

Here it comes - The partial eclipse phase starts to gobble up the sun!

We get about 6 million pictures of totality (which is absolutely not a complaint, and not to worry - mine are coming!), but the partial phases need some much-deserved love. They represent anticipation. They slowly introduce darkness and chills, a harbinger of the other-worldly display that is to come. And not least of all, they show us just how active the sun is as we approach totality!

Though a chunk of it is already obscured, we can see in white-light (i.e. through a filter akin to your eclipse glasses) that a number of sunspots are present. These are areas of increased magnetic flux that reduce surface temperature and are the common area of grander features that extend from the surface such as prominences, flares, and mass ejections. In other words, these indicate the activity of the sun, and just how crazy the bordering features and corona may look at totality. And boy was it good!

The sun ebbs and flows through its level of activity at 11 year intervals. During the 2017 eclipse, we were near a solar minimum with a more divided corona and less prominent filaments extending from the surface. This year, we're much closer to a solar maximum (peaking in 2025). My previous pictures of the prominences show this, and the corona you'll get soon will prove it (in a MAJOR way).

So, enjoy this lesser appreciated part of the show. It's the anticipating whisper of what is to come!

Scope: 8" Orion Astrograph
Mount: CGEM
Camera: Olympus Air A01
Control: Custom Python script over WiFi
Exposures: 12 x 1/8000s @ ISO 100

04/19/2024

Here's a book, and here's absolutely stunning photography, and here's... a familiar background? 👀

More soon 😁

04/12/2024

"The Southern Sunrise" - Greeting the sun at the end of totality!

The first images I was excited to review after the eclipse had finished were those that would feature the southern end of the lunar / solar rims. After all, the pink I and so many of us saw in this area during totality was nearly overwhelming!

So without further adieu, say hello to the friendly solar prominence (and its friends!) that made such a grand appearance. In my location at the center line of totality -- and likely the areas slightly north and fully south of the centerline -- this prominence stayed in view for the full duration, brightening as the moon moved and revealed more and more of the sun's southern corona. These prominences were so bright, in fact, that this image was taken with a shutter speed of just 125 microseconds to ensure the image wasn't blown out!

Boasting sizes several times that of Earth, these huge filaments are composed of plasma stretching throughout a magnetic field, where this field induces the "looping" effect we see from one magnetic pole to the other as anchored from the sun's surface. Though these prominences are the first images I've posted, they are but one of the many incredible views we get to witness during totality. That of course means there are more views of the event to come!

Scope: 8" Orion Astrograph
Mount: CGEM
Camera: Olympus Air A01
Control: Custom Python script over WiFi
Exposures: 2 x 1/8000s @ ISO 100

04/11/2024

"Sunset at the Northern Rim" - A look at the northern prominences just before April's total solar eclipse

This is literally the first image I took when totality approached. From the 8" newt, this is 2 stacked 1/8000s exposures, which really speaks to how shockingly bright these prominences are! Along the edge of the moon, we can see variances of edge-terminated craters with some beads of light forming in the dips as the sun disappears from view.

Due to some thin clouds present at the start of totality, this is a slightly less sharp capture than what I acquired on the other side after totality. More to come!

04/03/2024

Fun fact: If you had a kid today, they'll be able to legally enjoy a beer with you in the US by the time you can watch the next total solar eclipse skip across the continental states on August 12, 2045. Lucky for you, there's one on Monday that carves a path from Mexico to Maine!

I got my "small" scope and mount out last week to polish it up and tweak it for Monday's event. I won't finalize a destination until the weather forecast firms up Friday or Saturday, but an early look suggests southern Missouri may be one of the better spots alongside Maine. Southern Illinois is in a close second!

My white-light photo of the sun on Thursday showed some spectacular solar activity. Sunspot AR13615 (big splotches to the right of the frame) is a massive collective that spans more than 130,000 miles / 220,000 kilometers. To put this in perspective, you'd need to drive around the Earth five and a half times to cover that distance - almost 3 months of nonstop driving at typical interstate speeds!

These kinds of sunspots are great news for eclipse watchers. They are representative of increased solar activity, and 3615 actually produced a huge X-class solar flare (i.e. BIG OL' FIRE) just 4 hours after I took this picture. Activity like this can produce more entanglements in the corona during the total eclipse, and also make the chance of reddish/pinkish prominences at the rim of the moon more likely during totality. By comparison to 2017, the sun is quite a bit busier!

And I cannot stress this enough: If you're outside the path of totality AT ALL, the experience is absolutely not the same! The solar corona and environmental darkening/etc is only present within the path of totality. If you can make it to the path in clear skies, you will not be disappointed! It's an unforgettable experience that is as rare as it is powerful.

09/25/2023

The Forsaken Nebula - IC5068

There is certainly an artistic eye put to use when composing astrophotos, but sometimes the sky paints the picture for us as we see with The Forsaken Nebula (IC5068)! This portrait captures the cloudy brushstrokes of Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Sulphur outlining a door to the unknown through the constellation Cygnus. Lying about 1,600 light years away, this 2-panel mosaic covers a field nearly 1 degree in height (North-South), or about twice the size of the full moon. It's a great reminder how enormous some of these areas are in our skies!

This is the first (and so far the only planned) mosaic I've done with the 12" telescope, and it turned out so well that I may have to consider more once I get the gear set back up. Stitching went seamlessly (literally) using PixInsight's Photometric Mosaic scripts, and this area certainly called for the effort with the entire "celestial door" barely fitting in such a field of view. The delicate wisps of obscuring dust are so unique, it's a shame this area tends to be often overlooked by the camera for the much richer North American Nebula region nearby.

09/15/2023

It's one of the most popular narrowband targets among astrophotographers, and for exceptional reason! Meet the great Cygnus Wall, a 20 light-year long ridge embedded in a much larger region better known as the North American Nebula. This wall area (which to the creative geographic mind marks the shore along Latin America) is teeming with star formation activity. The young hot stars energize dense quantities of Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Sulphur gas which in turn emit a tri-color feast for our eyes.

This image represents the first I've posted with 3 distinct narrowband channels, mapped here in the classic Hubble "SHO" palette with Sulphur assigned to Red, Hydrogen to Green, and Oxygen to Blue. By using this false color mapping, we can truly appreciate the wonderful variety of gas densities throughout the region, something brought to even greater contrast and depth with huge bands of opaque obstructing dust. In addition to the gas mapping, stars have been mapped to a standard true color (RGB) palette to represent the area in a natural light, something which I first attempted with the Helix Nebula and will continue to do for other narrowband targets given the pleasing success it's achieved in my data.

After having become so accustomed to faint and difficult targets, this strong narrowband region was a real treat to process. In fact, the signal was so good that it took some restraint not to over-sharpen the countless folds throughout the ridge. This explosive, evolving area is just one more example of the incredible activity that happens right "next door" to us - indeed only 1500 light years away!

09/08/2023

The Cygnus Wall has been around forever, but has it ever been on TV?!

Spot on Fox 2 coming up soon to promote SPACE: A Celestial Circus Show premiering tonight!

09/07/2023

Love seeing a bunch of it in one spot ✨
I'm all set up in the lobby of the Florissant Performing Arts Center in advance of the opening of "SPACE: A Celestial Circus Show" tomorrow!

09/01/2023

It's a shame there aren't many more planetary nebulae that sit close to us. The Helix Nebula - practically a neighbor at a distance of 650 light years - is a grand display of gasses ejected by the star at center as it sheds its outer layers during the final stages of its stellar life. Here, layers of Oxygen gas (blue) and Hydrogen gas (red) stretch just a light year and a half in each direction, and are energized by the incredibly hot core that remains of the central star.

Because of the Helix Nebula's proximity to us, it presents us some of the best examples of cometary knots, the strange snake-like tunnels of cloud best seen here reaching toward the central star in the outer skirts of the central Oxygen (blue) emission. A confirmed origin of these knots remains a mystery, making them an attractive ongoing area of astro research. For us laypeople at home, they are downright fascinating to explore visually in an already busy area of gas!

With the Helix Nebula barely reaching over 30 degrees in altitude from my local photographing area outside St. Louis, it was a great chance to take advantage of better southern views while my big gear was set up in New Mexico. This is the first multi-channel narrowband process I've completed and shared, and I'm very excited with the results after a successful combination of true-color RGB stars with the Narrowband emission data. I'm quite pleased to have captured a huge amount of 2- and 3-channel narrowband data while in New Mexico, as these filters offer some of the crispest and most stunning views of any objects within our own Milky Way home. More to come soon!

Fuzzy Photographs

03/15/2025

04/21/2024

04/19/2024

04/12/2024

04/11/2024

04/03/2024

09/25/2023

09/15/2023

09/08/2023

09/07/2023

09/01/2023

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