Latest Images
Whirlpool Galaxy (ST10XE)
Texas Star Party 08 (DSLR)
Moon and Seven Sisters (DSLR)
Cal Neb and Comet Holmes (DSLR)
Flaming Star WF (DSLR)
Crab Nebula (DSI Pro II)
California Nebula (DSLR)
Comet Holmes (DSLR)
Pelican Nebula (DSLR)
Helix Nebula (DSLR)
M33 Triangulum Galaxy (DSLR)
Pinwheel Galaxy (DSLR)
California Nebula (DSI Pro II)
Composite of HA Nebula Regions (DSI Pro II)
Horsehead Nebula (DSI Pro II)
IC410 "Tadpoles" HA (DSI Pro II)
NGC7635 (DSI Pro II)
Mercury Transit (CoolPix 995)
NGC6992 Ha (DSI Pro II)
M27 RGB (DSI Pro II)
Lagoon Nebula in H-alpha (DSI Pro II)
TSP Star Cloud (300D)
Comet 73P Fragments (300D)
Orion Nebula in H-alpha (DSI Pro II)
Orion's Belt Region (Medium Format Film)
Desert Swan (Medium Format Film)
Cygnus Mosaic (Medium Format Film)
TSP Milkyway WF (Medium Format Film)
Leo Trio of Galaxies 04/01/05 (300D)
Partial Solar Eclipse 04/08/05 (300D)
M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy 04/01/05 (300D)
Comet Machholz and Friends 1/29/05 (300D)
Orion Sword Wide Field 1/29/05 (300D)
Comet Machholz and M45 1/7/05 (300D)
Pleiades - The Seven Sisters 12/11/04 (300D)
Comet Machholz - 12/10/04 (300D)
Lunar Eclipse - Into the Light 10/27/04 (300D)
Sunspots - Before the Storm 10/03 (CP 995)
Pipe Nebula - 5/19/04 (Film)
M20 Trifid Nebula - 5/21/04 (300D)
Omega Centauri - 5/22/04 (300D)
Comet C/2001 Q4 NEAT - 5/19/04 (300D)
M4 Antares Region - 5/22/04 (300D)
M81 Group of Galaxies - 3/14/04 (300D)
Rosette Nebula - 2/16/04 (300D)
6/08 The weather at the Texas Star Party was fantastic this year, making up for the dismal conditions that sent many people home early last year. I have new SBIG camera that was my primary imager for the week but I did manage to take a few wide field DSLR of the southern Milkyway region shots in parallel. SBIG shots to follow...
4/8/08 Captured a young Moon in a close encounter with the Pleiades star cluster.
3/7/08 Captured this shot of Comet Holmes and the California Nebula out at Upham on a beautiful night. The comet has faded over the past months and now makes lovely companion to the beautiful California Nebula in Perseus.
01/18/08 Here's a first light image taken using my new (used) Canon 200mm USM f2.8 lens. The full resolution image displays sharp stars in the corners @ f3.5. This lens is a great performer!
12/18/07 Captured the Crab Nebula from the backyard this week
11/26/07 Here's another shot taken on 11/8 at the Upham DSO site. Still loving this modified DSLR...
11-9-07 Enjoyed a beautiful night at the Upham site last night and captured this image of the remarkable comet 17/P Holmes and it's disconnected tail. I collaborated with my buddy Rich Richins on this. Rich captured the detail in the bright core/dust cloud and I captured the deeper green and blue tails.
10-12-07 Captured a real beauty last night at Upham. I love this modified 350XT and my new (used) G11 mount. The combination of guiding with my 10" SCT and imaging with the TeleVue refractor worked really well. I saw little to no image shift in the process of registering the 2 hours of subframes. It was a beautiful night with no wind, mild temps (55 degrees), and good transparency and seeing conditions. Just me the Pelican and the coyotes...
10-07-07 Here's a second shot taken last weekend at the White Sands Star Party. We had a good contingent from the astronomy club (ASLC) this year and the weather was much improved over the drenching we suffered during May's Texas Star Party. There was some wind early and mediocre seeing conditions but the skies were dark and transparent and we enjoyed a couple of really great nights of imaging and observing.
10-07-07 Another shot using the new modified DSLR. This was taken at the White Sands Star Party from deep in the dunes at the beautiful Whites Sands National Monument.
04-14-07 Picked up a modified Canon 350XT from Hap Griffin and took it out to Upham last night. Wonderful H-alpha sensitivity and very low noise on five minute exposures. Captured a nice shot of M101.
02-17-07 Another CCD wide field image captured in full color from the ASLC dark sky site near Upham.
02-10-07 Here's a series of CCD wide field images. I used a Mogg DSI Pro to EOS adapter and my Canon 100mm lens to capture these H-alpha filtered images.
12-20-06 Captured my old nemesis (B33) from the backyard using my DSI Pro II and Hypertuned LXD75 mount. Everything worked well and I was pleased with the color data even though it was shot through the Las Cruces skyglow..
12-15-06 Captured the famous Tadpoles of IC410 in H-alpha light from the backyard.
11-15-06 Here's my first attempt at the Bubble Nebula - a definite CCD camera target. I captured color data at the Upham DSO site and H-alpha data in the backyard.
11-08-06 Captured a transit by the planet Mercury using my trusty CoolPix and TV85. Captured the start of the five hour event on the Missile Range and the latter stages from my backyard. I was involved in a car accident as I was heading home and fortunately no one was seriously injured. Guess I need to watch out for those planetary alignments...
10-21-06 Captured an image of the Veil Nebula during the Southern New Mexico Star Party at City of Rocks, SP. Beautiful area with gigantic boulders and clear dark skies. This was a busy weekend and several of us pulled double duty between a booth at the X-Prize Cup in Cruces and the Star Party. Oh well, sleep is overrated...
9/24/06 Finally captured a good set of RGB data and was able to complete my first full color DSI Pro II image - M27.
9/22/06 WSSP was cancelled this year so I gave the DSI Pro II talk I put together to the club instead. Wirt posted the talk on the ASLC lecture series page here. Note: you'll need to install the QCShow viewer from the link on the page to watch the talk.
6/3/06 Another H-Alpha image with the DSI Pro II. The Lagoon Nebula captured from the backyard.
4/25/06 Sagittarius Star Cloud captured at Texas Star Party 2006. This image won the monthly Digital_Astro Yahoo Group challenge!
4/25/06 Comet fragments in Corona Borealis. Another TSP 06 shot and one of my favorites.
3/11/06 Bought an entry level astronomical CCD camera - The new Meade DSI Pro II. I also bought the ATIK manual filter wheel, Steve Hamilton's DSI to T-thread adapter, the Meade RGB filter set, and a Schuler 9nm Ha filter. I'm really excited about trying my hand CCD/RGB imaging and have posted a first light image Ha image of M42.
1/28/06 Shot this medium format film photograph using my new Pentax 200mm f/4 lens on a cold but beautiful night at Upham.
10/15/05 My recent Cygnus Wide Field image "Desert Swan" took First Place in the Film/Digital category at the Lodestar Astronomy Center 2005 Astro-Photography Contest! M45 from last December placed second.
8/13/05 Bought a new telescope and portable mount! I've put together a webpage to share thoughts and performance tests on my new Meade LXD75 SN-6 here.
7/4/05 Did a last minute setup and imaged the Deep Impact event after a long day of driving from San Diego. The images aren't spectacular but you can see an effect here.
06/04/05 Held an astro-imaging workshop at Upham as part of the ASLC advanced educational series of courses. The goal of the workshop was to have the participants gain hands-on experience by working through the processes of astrophotography. I think this approach was really beneficial and I was pleased with the progress we made over the course of the evening. I’m happy to report that we had a good turnout and everyone came away with images. I’m confident that most in the group will continue to image and build on the experience they gained. We will follow up with two image processing sessions in the coming weeks.
I was also able to get some WF imaging done later in evening and captured a nice medium format film images of the Milkyway.
05/05/05 Made the annual trek to TSP and spent a week with the gang trying to image and observe through sucker holes. Worst weather I've seen in five years of attending. Wouldn't you know it, the day it was over things dried out and the weather was perfect for a solid week. Grrrr... I picked up a used medium format SLR (Pentax 6x7) and matching SMC 105mm f2.4 lens for some wide field imaging this year and managed to squeeze in a few hours of prime-time Milkyway. Check the top row of images here. Wow! I love this camera and lens combination...
4/24/05 Processed Leo Trio from 4/1 using the GradientXTerminator PhotoShop plug-in and really like it. It has a good tutorial, simple interface, and provides excellent results. Check out the wide field version of this and note the uniform background gradient. Here's a before and after example.
4/8/05 Grabbed some images of a partial solar eclipse through passing clouds and wind. The Sun was only around 15% covered so not too spectacular but I did build a neat 500Kb animation.
4/1/05 Rich Richins, Steve Barkes, and I had a fine (but cold) time at the Upham DSO site. It was a terrific night for imaging and I shot another hour of Leo Trio exposures and 45 minutes of M51 before the cold (23 degrees) convinced us to pack it in
3/13/05 Participated in my first Messier Marathon and scored 108 of of a possible 109! What a great night. Click here for details.
1/29/05 Captured comet Machholz near the Perseus Double Cluster on a wild weather night at Upham. Steve Barkes, Joseph Mancella, and I experienced clouds, wind, rain, and even some clear transparent skies - all before moonrise at 10:00 pm. The seeing was poor and the wind gusted at times but I was able to image at 100mm. I love wide-field! Also captured an image of the Orion Sword region including the Horse-head and Witch-head nebulas.
1/07/05 Comet Machholz near closest approach to M45 from my backyard in Las Cruces. This image was a real challenge to process because it required an aggressive stretch to bring out the dim tail and this was complicated by background gradients and astigmatism due to using a 48mm LPS filter on my new 58mm lens. I bought a used Canon 100mm f2 lens from KEH (my pre-birthday present) and used it for the wide-field images. I really like this lens and will post star-tests when I get a chance.
12/11/04 Captured on a fruitful DSO night at Upham where ASLC members enjoyed a crystal clear and calm evening. I've been improving my M45 images over the years but hadn't yet captured a really deep shot of the blue nebulosity until now. Note the unusual linear streamers of dust on the right side. Wow!
12/10/04 A emerging comet graces the winter skies as imaged from the backyard. It should be growing brighter in the coming weeks and I hope to get better shots as it moves in closer to the Sun. For info on the discovery, click here. Steve Smith also has a great Machholz animation and images here.
10/27 A beautiful lunar eclipse and a curse is broken! I took a number of eclipse images last night but I thought this one was the most interesting. I ran out and took the image moments after the Red Sox won the World Series as they were celebrating on the field..
10/1 My image "Sunspots - Before the Storm" from last
October won Best of Show at the
Lodestar
Astronomy Center 2004 Astro-Photography Contest!
The two other images I
submitted also received Honorable Mention in their respective categories.
All images are currently on display in the Albuquerque Natural History
Museum. This was my third year of entering the contest and I'd never placed
in any category. What a thrill! I must be getting better at
this...
9/24 I gave a workshop on Astrophotography using DSLR Cameras at the White Sands Star-party this year and at the September meeting of ASLC. The ASLC lecture was recorded by Wirt Atmar and posted on the web. For a link click here.
6/19 Added four wide-field film images from TSP 2004 that were taken using my F-1 and a Canon 135mm f/2.5 lens that I bought from Doc G. All I can say about the lens is SWEET! I originally scanned the negatives with my PF1800 Silver scanner but wasn't happy with the results so I had PDQ rescan them on their Epson 1600 and I was very impressed. The high resolution scans are only 75 cents each, to boot.. This definitely inspires me to shoot film again!
I really enjoyed breaking out the Sky Atlas 2000 and picking out some of the many DSO's contained in these images.
6/3 Added another TSP image (M20) taken on Friday night using my 10" LX200. There was a little wind so I couldn't use a few of the exposures, but all in all I was pleased with the result considering the magnification. I used a 60mm f/15 guidescope and got good tracking results with the 208XT. That's a definite multi-exposure DSLR advantage over film. I could not have used the guidescope successfully on a single equivalent film exposure.
5/30 I shoot Omega Centauri at TSP each year and seem to be getting a little bit better at it as time goes by. I'm really pleased with this years result. I think the Rebel did a terrific job of capturing the golden color in some of those ancient stars. The center is still a little washed out so I may play with the numbers in stack to see if I can get a better balance (some cloudy night.)
5/30 The comet Q4 image was shot using my CG-5 instead of the LX200 as a tracking platform. I polar aligned with the polar scope but still had oblong stars in the one minute exposures. Fortunately the comet is moving quickly and the tracking errors are lost in the stars trailing due to relative motion. The 15 images were aligned to the comet nucleus and stacked using ImagesPlus. There is an interesting twist in the tail near the top of the image.
5/29 The M4 Antares Region shot is the first image from the week that I've found time to process. Really interesting area of Scorpius that I shot to capture Antares and M4. I got a bonus treat NGC-6144 without realizing it until I processed the image. I took darks but when I created a master dark then calibrated and stacked the images, there were fine dark vertical noise bands in the result. I ended up processing this without the dark frames and will need to get to the bottom of this problem for longer exposures. (This might be due to warmer temps as I didn't see the problem during the winter.)
5/18 - 5/22/04 (Texas Star Party) Had a great week at TSP and got lot's of imaging done as well as knocking off a binocular observing list and getting a pin. Five members of ASLC and three from the El Paso club camped together on the central observing field and we had a terrific time. We also had the best camp at the Star Party IMHO. (See Steve Smith's group photo here) Wil Tirion the cartographer and David Levy both spoke on Saturday.
4/17/04 I was named Artist of the Week by the Las Cruces Sun-News today for my astrophotography. This came as a complete surprise! I knew they were going to run an article on upcoming ASLC events but I had no idea I was being recognized until I opened the paper on Saturday morning. I saw the article and thought "Cool, astrophotos! Hey wait a minute, these look familiar..." I'm very honored and grateful for the recognition.
4/11/04 Added image from March of M81 and M82. This image
gave me problems due to bands of noise in the background that I never did
track down. I also had a circular pattern of skyglow that I attribute
to imaging toward the north over the brightest part of the city from my
location. It took me a few weeks to find enough time to really process
this one properly.
I also made another improvement to my tracking by decreasing the backlash
compensation I had programmed into the LX200. This made the reverse
dec. correction fall a little short of actually moving on the first step but
did significantly reduce a large jerk and associated vibration that would
cause my autoguider to sometimes oscillate.
3/11/04 Steve Barkes and I are giving a webcam imaging workshop on March 29th and April 11th here in Las Cruces for the ASLC and AAC. More info here.
3/11/04 I was a runner up in the monthly imaging challenge on the Digital Astro list for March with my Rosette image. I've been entering the challenges off and on for a couple of years and have never come close to winning. Progress!
2/16/04 I've been having vibration problems with my setup when I piggyback the TV85 on my LX200. There is so much weight on the forks due to the refractor, camera, and counterweights that any tracking correction (especially reversing dec) causes mechanical vibrations that don't dampen for several seconds and cause bloating in the stars in my images. I finally found a solution. I bought the Mead anti-vibration pads and they made a BIG difference.
1/04 I've been doing some imaging from the backyard using an IDAS LPS filter, on loan from my buddy Steve Smith. This camera and filter combination make it possible to image DSOs from within the city limits of Las Cruces. The 300D spectral response is not flat across the visible wavelengths and actually rolls off to around 15% at the Hydrogen-Alpha wavelength. (See a response curve here.) This makes it tougher to image emission nebula but I'm experimenting with a technique of combining LPS filtered and h-alpha filtered images to provide a more uniform response. Lumicon sells an h-alpha filter for around $60 and the h-alpha filtered images can be captured under the worst light pollution conditions (like when the moon is up.) My technique is to capture 6x longer at h-alpha, either through exposure or stacking and combine that with the red channel of the LPS filtered data. I sometimes also use the luminance channel if there are no other types of nebulosity in the frame. See an example of this technique here.
12/03 Also purchased ImagesPlus and DSLR Focus software for the new camera. ImagesPlus (IP) is extremely powerful for applying dark frames, aligning, and combining multiple large images. Great image processing tools and video tutorials, as well. DSLR Focus is only $20 and provides a means of focusing the 300D while viewing images on a laptop. (There's no live LCD display in this type of digital camera). Use of a Hartman mask and DSLR Focus pretty much allows me to nail the focus.
12/03 Well the most important recent news in my astro-imaging endeavor has been the purchase of my new Canon 300D. (Thanks Santa!) This camera continues to amaze me. Very low noise for multi-minute exposures and yet excellent sensitivity to dim objects. I bought the kit which includes the 18 - 55mm EOS zoom for terrestrial photography but will perform some star tests on the lens to check it's usefulness in astro-imaging. I also bought the TC-80N3 remote timer for the 10D and modified the connector to work with the 300D. Can't live without this baby!!!