Observing Mars in the Moonlight (Jan 4, 2023)

A selfie of me observing Mars, the bright reddish star at top, from home on January 4, 2023, with Mars then still bright a month after opposition. The waxing gibbous Moon is the bright object at left. The Pleiades are above Mars; the Hyades and Aldebaran are below Mars. Orion and Sirius are rising in the background below. The telescope is the Starfield Optics Gear115 on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. This could be useful for illustrating an article on cold weather observing! Though it was a pleasant -5° C this night and no wind. This is a focus blend of two exposures, one focused on me, and one on the sky, both 4 seconds at f/4 with the TTArtisan 21mm lens on the Canon R5 at ISO 1600.

Observing Mars on a Winter Night (December 9, 2022)

A selfie of me observing Mars, the bright object at top, in Taurus, on a mild winter night from home on December 9, 2022. Mars was then two days past opposition and at its brightest. The waning gibbous Moon is the bright glow at left, lighting the sky blue and the snowy landscape below with sparkling moonlight. Orion is rising behind me, while Gemini is at far left. I am observing with the Astro-Physics 130mm EDT refractor, an almost vintage telescope now, purchased in 1993 and still one of the best made of its type. It is on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. This is a blend of two exposures with the TTArtisan 21mm lens at f/2.8, one focused on me, and one focused on the stars, both with the Canon R6 at ISO 800 for 3.2 seconds. Diffraction spikes on Mars added for artistic effect with AstronomyTools actions.

Mars Occultation Selfie (Dec 7, 2022)

My usual trophy shot of me having bagged the game of the December 7, 2022 Mars occultation by the Full Moon, here grossly overexposed and in thin cloud at top. I shot this just after Mars disappeared behind the Moon for about an hour. The night was fairly mild, about -10° C, and windless. The night before it had been a windy -25° C! This is a single exposure with the Canon R6 and TTArtisan 21mm lens. I was shooting the occultation with the big refractor, the Astro-Physics 130mm on the AP Mach1 mount, and looking at it with the little refractor, the Sharpstar 61mm on the alt-azimuth mount. The light on my hand is from the electric gloves I had on!

Observing the November 2022 Total Eclipse of the Moon

A self-portrait of me observing the total eclipse of the Moon on November 8, 2022, on a very cold (-25° C) morning at 4 am. Above the red Moon are the stars of Taurus including the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters. This is a single 15-second exposure with the Canon R6 at ISO 3200 and 21mm TTArtisan lens at f/2.8. The camera gear in frame was the Star Adventurer tracker and the Canon R5 and RF15-35mm lens I used to take tracked images of the winter sky scene with the Milky Way.

Stargazing Under the Milky Way

A vertical panorama of the summer Milky Way over the observing field at the Saskatchewan Summer Star Party, held in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park in southwest Saskatchewan, Canada, at a latitude 49° N. The Park is a Dark Sky Preserve. This was August 26, 2022 on a perfect night of stargazing under very clear skies. The Milky Way extends from Sagittarius near the horizon, to Cygnus nearly overhead at this time, so a vertical sweep of 90°. I've left the satellite trails in for this scene. This is a panorama of 6 segments taken up the Milky Way with the camera on a tracker to prevent star trailing, blended with a set of 5 untracked exposures taken just prior with the tracker motor off for the ground, to prevent the foreground blurring. The ground segments were each 30 seconds at f/2 and ISO 3200, while the sky segments were each 1 minute at f/2.8 and ISO 1600, all with the Canon Ra and RF28-70mm lens, on the Star Adventurer Mini tracker. Each sky segment was a stack of two exposures. Stitched in PTGui, but blended in Photoshop. The original is 6500 x 10300 pixels.

Aurora Over CNSC with Observer (Feb 26, 2022)

What started out the night as a dim aurora brightened later and here appears over the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, in Churchill, Manitoba on February 26, 2022. This aurora was at Kp2 level (very low) at best. This is a single frame with the TTArtisan 11mm full-frame fish-eye lens at f/2.8 for 10 seconds with the Canon Ra at ISO 1250.

Selfie with Lunar Eclipse (Nov. 19, 2021)

A selfie of the successful eclipse hunter having bagged his game, on the morning of November 19, 2021, having chased into clear skies to get the 97% partial lunar eclipse of Nov. 18/19, 2021 from Alberta. I drove 90 minutes north from home to near the town of Rowley, Alberta, to escape the clouds looming on the southern horizon. I shot this at 2:40 am MST with the Moon emerging from the umbral shadow, so quite bright and overexposed here below the Pleiades in Taurus, and to the west of the Milky Way. I had two cameras on trackers set up to shoot wide-field shots of the eclipsed Moon. This is a single 25-second exposure at f/2.5 with the Rokinon SP 14mm lens on the Canon 6D at ISO 3200. Topaz Sharpen AI applied to the subject.

Alberta Star Party 2021 - Group at Dobsonian

A group at a Discovery Dobsonian at the Alberta Star Party, September 3-4, 2021, in the Starland County Recreation Area on the Red Deer River.

Alberta Star Party 2021 - Group at SCT

A group at a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at the Alberta Star Party, September 3-4, 2021, in the Starland County Recreation Area on the Red Deer River.

Alberta Star Party 2021 - Observing Group in Red Light

A group of observers with telescopes at the Alberta Star Party, September 3-4, 2021, in the Starland County Recreation Area on the Red Deer River.

Alberta Star Party 2021 - Observer at SCT

An observer at a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at the Alberta Star Party, September 3-4, 2021, in the Starland County Recreation Area on the Red Deer River. The Big Dipper is at upper left. A mild aurora brightens the northern horizon.

Alberta Star Party 2021 - Refractor Pair

A pair of refractors at the Alberta Star Party, September 3-4, 2021, in the Starland County Recreation Area on the Red Deer River.

Alberta Star Party 2021 - In Twilight

A view of the Alberta Star Party grounds in the darkening twilight, September 3, 2021, in the Starland County Recreation Area on the Red Deer River.

Shooting the 2021 Perseids

A selfie of me setting up to photograph the 2021 Perseid meteor shower on August 12, 2021 at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, as one camera captures the scene looking east while I finish setting up another camera in the foreground. The radiant of the shower is obvious, in Perseus, at lower left in the northeast. The Milky Way stretches from northeast to southwest (top right). A dim red aurora is on the horizon to the northeast. Cygnus is overhead at centre. Jupiter is the bright object above me. The Big Dipper is at upper left low in the northwest. This is a blend of 24 exposures taken over 3 hours, with the foreground coming from one image at the start of the sequence which had a meteor in it. The other 23 images add the other meteors, so this blend compresses 3 hours of meteor activity into one frame. All were with the TTArtisan 7.5mm circular fish-eye lens at f/2 on the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 3200 for a series of 30-second exposures, 316 in all over 3 hours, from which the 24 with meteors were extracted for stacking with Lighten blend mode. The camera was on the Star Adventurer Mini tracker to make alignment of the meteors easier in post-production, so the meteors are where they appeared in the sky relative to the background stars. This lens does not fill the frame; it is a circular fish-eye but at f/2 faster than any other fish-eye that fits on a full-frame camera, with the speed essential for picking up meteors. I was setting up another tracker to take shots with a 14mm lens.

Aurora Selfie #2 (April 16, 2021)

An aurora selfie taken during the display on April 16-17, 2021, with the Sony a7III and 15mm Laowa lens. I am operating the Canon EOS Ra which was taking still images. I used the Sony this night mostly to do 4K movies.

Aurora Selfie #1 (April 16, 2021)

An aurora selfie taken during the display on April 16-17, 2021, with the Sony a7III and 15mm Laowa lens.

Shooting the Great Conjunction with Closeup Inset (Dec 20, 2020)

A selfie shooting the "great conjunction" of Jupiter and Saturn on December 20, 2020, the night before the closest approach of the two planets, seen here in the distance over the peak. The inset shows the closeup view captured by the telescope a little earlier in the evening, with the two planets and their brightest moons labelled. The planets were less than 1/8 degree apart (8 arc minutes) this night, on a perfect night at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. They were 6 arc minutes apart the next night but clouds prevailed! I am shooting the planets with a Celestron SE6 tube assembly on the Sky-Watcher EQM-35 mount and with the Canon 60Da cropped frame camera, for maximum magnification. The background selfie is a blend of two exposures, one focused for the background and sky, and one focused for me and the telescope in the foreground, both single 1.3-second exposures at f/2.8 and with the Canon 35mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 400. Another camera for shooting tracked shots is in the distance at left. The closeup inset is a blend of short 0.5-second (for the planets) and long 3-second exposures (for the moons) with the scope at f/10 for 1,500mm focal length.

Shooting the Great Conjunction (Dec 20, 2020)

A selfie shooting the "great conjunction" of Jupiter and Saturn on December 20, 2020, the night before the closest approach of the two planets, seen here in the distance over the peak. The planets were less than 1/8 degree apart (8 arc minutes) this night, on a perfect night at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. I am shooting the planets with a Celestron SE6 tube assembly on the Sky-Watcher EQM-35 mount and with the Canon 60Da cropped frame camera, for maximum magnification. This selfie is a blend of two exposures, one focused for the background and sky, and one focused for me and the telescope in the foreground, both single 1.3-second exposures at f/2.8 and with the Canon 35mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 400. Another camera for shooting tracked shots is in the distance at left.

Shooting the Great Conjunction with Close-Up View (Dec 19, 2020)

A selfie shooting the "great conjunction" of Jupiter and Saturn on December 19, 2020, two nights before the closest approach of the two planets. The inset shows the image I took a few minutes earlier through the telescope at left. By the time I took this selfie the planets had dropped into the clouds again and only Jupiter was visible to the camera, and here it is out of focus in the distance at lower right, as I focused for the foreground. So the planets were low! The planets were less than 1/4 degree apart (13 arc minutes) this night, but with the clouds I was lucky to capture them at all. Only the Galiliean moons of Jupiter showed up, and fuzzy, but not any of the moons of Saturn. I am shooting the planets with a Celestron SE6 tube assembly on the Sky-Watcher EQM-35 mount and with the Canon 60Da cropped frame camera, for maximum magnification. I placed the scope at the end of my driveway so I could get a clear shot to the southwest. The inset shows the image I shot through the telescope a few minutes earlier (before I shot the selfie) when the planets were a little higher up in the clear break visible here. The closeup inset is a stack of 4 x 4-second exposures with the Canon 60Da at ISO 800, and at the f/10 prime focus of the scope, so at 1,500mm focal length. The bright glow at upper left of the main image is the waxing crescent Moon in clouds, and it is creating a refraction-effect "moondog" in the clouds at right. The main selfie image is a single 15-second exposure at f/2.8 and with the Canon 35mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 1600.

Shooting the Great Conjunction (Dec 19, 2020)

A selfie shooting the "great conjunction" of Jupiter and Saturn on December 19, 2020, two nights before the closest approach of the two planets. By the time I took this selfie the planets had dropped into the clouds again and only Jupiter was visible to the camera, and here it is out of focus in the distance at lower right, as I focused for the foreground. So the planets were low! The planets were less than 1/4 degree apart (13 arc minutes) this night, but with the clouds I was lucky to capture them at all. I am shooting the planets with a Celestron SE6 tube assembly on the Sky-Watcher EQM-35 mount and with the Canon 60Da cropped frame camera, for maximum magnification. I placed the scope at the end of my driveway so I could get a clear shot to the southwest. The bright glow at upper left of the main image is the waxing crescent Moon in clouds, and it is creating a refraction-effect "moondog" in the clouds at right. The main selfie image is a single 15-second exposure at f/2.8 and with the Canon 35mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 1600.

Selfie with Orion StarSeeker HC

A selfie using the Orion StarSeeker IV 130mm with the optional hand controller.

Observing Mars on Halloween Night

A selfie observing Mars on Halloween night, October 31, 2020, with Mars two weeks past a close perihelic opposition on Oct. 13. The seeing was particularly good this night (despite the thin cloud). I am observing using the Astro-Physics 130mm EDF f/6 refractor and the Baader Großfeld binocular viewer for a comfortable two-eyed viewing experience. The “Eye of Mars,” Solis Lacus or Planum, was particularly prominent. The Full “Blue” Moon provides the illumination. This is a single exposure with the Canon 6D MkII and 35mm Canon lens.

Observing Mars on Halloween Night (with Mars Map)

A selfie observing Mars on on Halloween night, October 31, 2020 with Mars two weeks past a close perihelic opposition on Oct. 13. The seeing was particularly good this night (despite the thin cloud) and the inset shows the face of Mars visible this night and hour, using a screen capture from the Mars Atlas app. I am observing using the Astro-Physics 130mm EDF f/6 refractor and the Baader Großfeld binocular viewer for a comfortable two-eyed viewing experience. The “Eye of Mars,” Solis Lacus or Planum, was particularly prominent. The Full “Blue” Moon provides the illumination. This is a single exposure with the Canon 6D MkII and 35mm Canon lens.

Observing Mars at Closest Approach with Map (Oct 6, 2020)

A selfie of me observing Mars at its closest approach on Oct 6, 2020. The seeing was quite good despite the clouds, and with the most interesting side of Mars (arguably!) facing Earth at the time of observation. Syrtis Major and Sabaeus Sinus were prominent. Moonlight provides the illumination. This is a single exposure with the Sigma 24mm Art lens and Nikon D750.