A selfie of me viewing the close approach of Venus to the Pleiades star cluster on April 1, 2020, using big 15x70 Celestron SkyMaster Pro binoculars mounted on a Canadian-built Starlight Innovations binocular mount, a parallelogram-style mount that allows viewing up high and with the binocular at different heights without losing its pointing position. Orion is over my left shoulder; the Hyades is at centre above the mount. The waxing gibbous Moon provided the illumination. This is a stack of 4 images for the ground to smooth noise and 1 image for the sky to minimize trailing, all 13 seconds at f/5.6 with the Sigma 24mm lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 1600. Topaz Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI applied.
A selfie of me watching the aurora on March 20/21, 2020 from my rural backyard. This was the spring equinox and auroras often park in activity around the equinoxes. This was the first display seen locally for some time though the Kp Index was low, no more than 2 or 3. This was about 12:30 am MDT. The night before I had been shooting aurora selfies from Churchill, Manitoba. I had just got home from the evening flight from Winnipeg and unpacked the camera to shoot this. Cassiopeia is at left, Vega is the bright star at right. This is a single 15-second exposure with the Sony a7III at ISO 1600 and Venus Optics 15mm at f/2.
