My Outer Space Place

My Outer Space Place Welcome to My Outer Space Place! I'm Brian, your host, and these are my Astrophotography images I've captured from my backyard in NE Ohio.

I've only been doing this since the fall of 2020 but still learning. Thanks and check out my images posted below!

Comet “C/2022 E3 (ZTF)” is a previously unknown non-periodic comet that was discovered March 2, 2022 by astronomers at ...
01/24/2026

Comet “C/2022 E3 (ZTF)” is a previously unknown non-periodic comet that was discovered March 2, 2022 by astronomers at the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) in Mount Palomar, California. The comet was originally thought to be an asteroid but as it drew closer to the sun, it began to reveal its tell-tale dust trails and its status was later changed to a bona fide comet.

The comet’s nucleus was estimated to be about a mile wide and it produced increasingly striking dual tails as it passed nearer to the sun. The shorter but wider fan-shaped dust tail on the bottom right was due to dust and debris particles released from the comet’s nucleus. The narrower and much longer (and fainter) ion tail on top consists of various gasses ionized by the sun’s radiation, and it extended millions of miles in length.

One feature that made this comet unique is the bright green-blue glow around its nucleus, which is due to the effect of ultraviolet radiation from the sun breaking down high concentrations of diatomic carbon molecules within the comet’s head. This green-blue coma intensified as the comet reached is perihelion (closest distance to the sun) of 103 million miles in January of 2023 and subsequently provided astronomers and star gazers with striking visual and photographic opportunities.

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) made its closest approach to Earth on February 1, 2023 at a mere distance of 26 million miles. As of this posting, the comet is now currently about a billion miles away and is no longer visible from Earth. While it will eventually leave our solar system, astronomers estimate it won’t return for many millions of years, if at all, based on its current trajectory and speed.

I captured this image back in February of 2023 but was limited to a very short total exposure time due to perpetual clouds and bad weather. This image represents only 29 total minutes of 60 second exposures so the detail is not that great and the background is pretty noisy (longer total integration time = better quality and cleaner images). At least I was able to capture what I did. I really didn’t feel like waiting a few more million years to try again!

TECH CARD FOR NERDS
Stellarvue SVX102T Triplet Telescope (reduced to 535mm)
iOptron CEM70 Equatorial Tracking Mount
ASI2600mm mono Astro Camera
Astronomik Deep Sky RGB-L Filters
29 Minutes Total Exposure Time
NINA, PHD2, Astro Pixel Processor, Photoshop, Siril

California NebulaNGC-1499, also known as the California Nebula, is a large diffuse emission nebula found in the constell...
01/19/2026

California Nebula

NGC-1499, also known as the California Nebula, is a large diffuse emission nebula found in the constellation Perseus. This nebula is located about 1000 light years from Earth and was first discovered in 1884 by American astronomer, Edward E. Barnard. The California Nebula is a very large but very faint emission nebula that measures around 22.5 light years wide and some 100 light years in length. It gets its colloquial name because its shape is said to resemble the state of California.

The reddish-yellow and blue hues are a result of hydrogen and oxygen atoms within the massive gas clouds that are being ionized by extreme radiation from the nearby star, Xi Persei (pictured just above the main blue area in my image). It may not look like it (as pictured in the vastness of space) but this intense blue giant star has a mass of about 40 times our own sun and is over 12,000 times more luminous!

I captured this wide-field image over several nights from my own backyard in northeast Ohio using the gear listed below. It represents over 17 hours’ worth of combined five-minute exposures.

Tech Card:
Askar FMA180 Pro Telescope
Skywatcher EQ6R-Pro Telescope Mount
ASI294mm-Pro mono astro camera
Antlia 3nm HSO Narrowband Filters
70x300” HA (Hydrogen-Alpha Filter)
69x300” Sii (Sulfur Filter)
69x300” Oiii (Oxygen Filter)
17.3 Hrs Total Integration
Bortle 5.5 (Northeast Ohio, USA)
Captured using NINA and PHD2 software
Stacked and processed using Astro Pixel Processor, Photoshop, and Siril

Here is a photo collage I took from the Lunar Eclipse from last Thursday night. Was pretty cool to see in person!
03/16/2025

Here is a photo collage I took from the Lunar Eclipse from last Thursday night. Was pretty cool to see in person!

10/12/2024

Here's a quick and dirty time-lapse of Thursday night's G4 solar storm shot from my front porch. This is roughly five hour's worth of 8 second exposures shot every 30 seconds (about 700 images). Had to delete a lot of frames from what I originally had due to a fogged lens (forgot to plug in the dew heater) plus I kept kicking the damn tripod! The lights really get going in the middle of the video.

Canon t3i and Rokinon 14mm, Northeast Ohio, USA.

Facebook compression really kills the video so there's a youtube link in the comments for a cleaner version as well.

Ok, so several people have asked me about the "Parade of Planets" occuring the early morning of June 3. While the alignm...
06/02/2024

Ok, so several people have asked me about the "Parade of Planets" occuring the early morning of June 3. While the alignment of planets in our solar system isn't all that rare, it's still important to manage your expectations.

What you actually will see vs what you might think you'll see (even with a telescope) are quite different. Even the planets you can see will appear as nothing more than a bright dot, as they do now.

Just a few shots with a cheap cell phone from Friday night's Aurora Borealis from our front porch in northeast Ohio.
05/11/2024

Just a few shots with a cheap cell phone from Friday night's Aurora Borealis from our front porch in northeast Ohio.

04/16/2024

So here is my time lapse video of the April 8, 2024 total eclipse. I’ll spare you all the gory details but two minutes before first contact was when Murphy showed up and the wheels fell off. Nothing wanted to work right and I was scrambling like a chicken with its head cut off to just make it through.

Despite all the technical issues and clouds rolling through, I was still able to capture the event, albeit not exactly as planned. In the end though, it worked out and seeing full totality visually was indeed nothing short of spectacular!

This 33 second video is comprised of 907 separate images shot at ten second intervals over the 2.5 hour event. The continual passing of medium thick high clouds gives it more of a choppy look but I think it still turned out decent enough. You can even see a couple of sun spots near the middle and upper left.

So here is an inverse version of the full disk sun I posted earlier. I love how the photo "negative" effect increases th...
02/13/2024

So here is an inverse version of the full disk sun I posted earlier. I love how the photo "negative" effect increases the contrast to highlight more features that seem to get lost in the color version.

You can really see more of the texture and the wavy prominences as they snake around on the surface of the chromosphere. All of the proms and spicules around the limb are pretty cool to see as well.

Here is another full disk hydrogen alpha image of the sun I captured last weekend. This one shows much more prominence a...
02/12/2024

Here is another full disk hydrogen alpha image of the sun I captured last weekend. This one shows much more prominence and spicule detail around the limb that I inadvertently cut off in the previous post. Quite a bit of activity happening on our star as we approach the solar maximum later this year. (Solar maximum is the peak of activity during a typical 11-year solar cycle)

Sharpstar 50EDPH 50/275mm
ASI174mm
Daystar Quark Chromosphere Filter
Best 25% of 1000 video frames
Sharpcap Pro, Autostakkert3, imPPG, Photoshop

Here's an inverse Hydrogen Alpha image of our sun I shot last Sunday afternoon. Lots of interesting surface detail in th...
02/09/2024

Here's an inverse Hydrogen Alpha image of our sun I shot last Sunday afternoon. Lots of interesting surface detail in the chromosphere, including sunspots, plages, and prominences on the surface and around the limb.

Stellarvue SVX102T
iOptron CEM70
ASI174mm
Daystar Quark Chromosphere HA Solar Eyepiece/Filter
Best 25% of 1000 fast video frames
Sharpcap Pro, Autostakkert3, ImPPG, Photoshop

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