Astronomy Nightly

Lunar Eclipse

September 1, 2026

This was an interesting project, one I didn't plan to do. Based on the weather forecast, I didn't plan to shoot the lunar eclipse and did zero prep or research for it. However, just before peak of the eclipse, the clouds cleared enough to see the moon. Since my telescope is mounted permanently in th…

SBIG STF-8300C For Sale – SOLD!

July 15, 2025

Equipment

I'm selling my trusty SBIG STF-8300C. Price is $350 and includes PayPal fees and shipping to the 48 states. Payment via PayPal or Zelle. If you're interested, please contact me through my Cloudy Nights listing here: https://www.cloudynights.com/classifieds/item/415144-sbig-stf-8300c-kaf-8300-cooled-…

The Rosette Nebula – NGC 2237, 2238, 2239 & 2244

March 18, 2025

Nebula

Here's my latest astrophotography project, the Rosette Nebula. The clouds haven't been kind lately and it's getting late in nebula season to image the Rosette, so I had to scrape together what time I could on it. I gathered 12.2 hours of data over 5 nights for this. After rejecting images with high …

116 Hour Horsehead and Flame Nebulae Mosaic

February 6, 2025

Nebula

It's amazing what you can see if you stare long enough. I'm lucky to have fairly decent skies at our home. They're not world-class skies, but they're not horrible either. Once leaving the nearest "road to town," you'd drive about 5 miles on winding country roads to find our house. There are no stree…

Fish Head Nebula – IC1795

January 12, 2025

Nebula

Here's another backyard astronomy project. This is the Fish Head Nebula, IC1795. In the sky, it's a little corner hanging off of the Heart Nebula on the opposite side of the Soul Nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. The Heart and Soul get lots of astronomer attention and I shot both of them this …

Science Lesson! Cygnus Wall in NGC7000

January 7, 2025

Education

Science lesson! My kids took an online astronomy class about a year ago. As part of the class, they used a remote telescope service called Slooh. Slooh is a fantastic intro to deep sky astronomy for kids. It lets you pick targets then a telescope takes an image and sends it to you. That was great fo…

Elephant’s Trunk Nebula – LDN1105

January 4, 2025

Nebula

This was another side-quest project while waiting for a much bigger project's target to rise. The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a star-forming area and emission nebula that's part of a much larger area named IC1396. It hangs out about 2400 light years away in the same chunk of sky as the constellation …

Crescent Nebula – NGC6888

December 1, 2024

Nebula

Honestly, this started out as another "filler" project. I was looking ahead to winter projects and wanted to get fairly deep looks at several targets I hadn't shot before. A little over a month ago when I started this, those targets didn't get high enough in the sky to start imaging until several ho…

Soul Nebula – IC1848

November 24, 2024

Nebula

The Soul Nebula is very near my last project, the Heart Nebula, and is also an emission nebula in the Cassiopeia constellation. I captured over 56 hours of data for this image between October 17th and 23rd, 2024. I think this is another "my biggest project to date." I used Siril’s OSC_Extract_HaOIII…

Heart Nebula – IC1805

November 10, 2024

Nebula

The Heart Nebula is an emission nebula in the Cassiopeia constellation. The light from this left the Heart Nebula 7,500 years ago and thankfully found its way to my telescope. It's massive at 165 light years across. Between Oct 9 and Oct 16, 2024, I captured almost 43 hours of data for this image. I…