Photography by Ben Smith

08/16/2026

The moon and Venus in the sky over Phnom Penh tonight. Just a quick pic with the phone while taking the dogs for a walk

08/09/2026

Check out my friends new page, I know you will enjoy it!

Hey everyone! I've decided it's time to jump in and actually brand my astrophotography so welcome to my page! My goal is simple...share the miracle of the night sky with everyone I can! So if you love the night sky, think these images are interesting and are ok with geeking out a little bit - help a girl out and like, comment and share my stuff!

It's only fitting that the first image shared on my newly created page is M16 - The Eagle Nebula which contains the famous Pillars of Creation. (See what I did there?)

🦅✨ The Eagle Nebula - A Stellar Nursery in Deep Space is
a massive cloud of gas and dust located about 5,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens.
And those famous structures in the center? 🌌
They're the Pillars of Creation, enormous columns of gas and dust where new stars are forming. The largest stretches roughly 4–5 light-years through space. To put that into perspective, that's comparable to the distance between our Sun and the nearest star system.
🔥 These pillars are being sculpted by the intense radiation and stellar winds from massive young stars nearby. Eventually, those forces will erode the pillars away.
But here's the part that really makes you stop and think…
We're not seeing the Eagle Nebula as it exists today.
The light captured in this image began its journey toward Earth roughly 5,700 years ago. The Eagle Nebula we see is a snapshot of the distant past—long before recorded history as we know it.
In fact, some astronomers believe the pillars may have already been significantly altered or even destroyed by events within the nebula. We simply won't see those changes until the light carrying that information reaches us.
🤯 The most mind-blowing part? Those enormous Pillars of Creation are so vast that you could fit our entire solar system inside just one of them four to five times over—even though they appear so small compared to the massive cloud of gas and dust surrounding them.

📷 First Light Astrophotography

08/07/2026

08/07/2026

A video from inside the temple, Koh Khnor Pagoda near Tonle Bati

08/05/2026

Some follow up photos from our trip to Tonle Bati. I found a wat(monastery/pagoda) on the map that was right along the shore of the lake. So thought it might be a good place to visit. . Actually it was somewhere our guide have never been before so that made me happy.

We were able to see the stupas, brightly colored prayer monuments that are memorials for the ancestors, and a small temple that was open and we could walk around it. We were the only people around, except for the monks who were eating when we showed up.

08/04/2026

Having a little fun with the rain and the pool

08/03/2026

Spent the morning going to the Killing Fields and Genocide Museum. A little hard to think about all the evil that happened here. But they do a good job of making the areas nice and peaceful.

This is the memorial stupa, a place of meditation and a monument in the Buddhist tradition, it holds more than 8000 skulls and various bones found throughout the site. If you want to zoom in you can see the skulls through the windows

07/30/2026

Here are some more detailed photos from todays trip to Tonle Bati