All my images below are free to use for anything covered by a Creative Commons CC-BY license, which is pretty much everything, commercial or non-commercial.

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Some of my gear:

Posted November 24, 2018

The Tulip in Hydrogen-alpha: Tulip Nebula Sh2-101 and the surrounding HII region in Cygnus, centered on the open star cluster NGC 6871. Most of this is around six or seven thousand lightyears away from us, and to give you a sense of the size of this region: that bright tulip shape is over 600 trillion kilometers wide (top to bottom in this rotation).

Gear details: William Optics SpaceCat 51 Apochromatic refractor (250mm fl, f/4.9), ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro cooled monochrome camera, ZWO AM5 Harmonic Drive EQ mount, Antlia 3nm Ha filter, 60x300-second subs, 5 hours total integration time. Location: my backyard, coastal New Hampshire, US.

Posted August 3, 2025

The Space Cat was already set up and ready to go, so that's what I'm imaging with tonight. The William Optics Space Cat 51, 250mm Focal length, F/4.9 Petzval Apochromatic Ref. and the ZWO AM5 Strainwave EQ mount on the backyard pier. I have the ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro Monochrome camera with the 3nm narrowband 48mm filter set on tonight, Ha, OIII, SII, but haven't picked a target yet!

Posted August 1, 2025

The IC1396 Region with the Elephant's Trunk in HaOIIISII narrowband. The view from my backyard, given a specific set of equipment, time, and clear skies: around 60 x 300-second exposures for each of the 48mm Antlia 3nm Ha, OIII, SII filters, ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro monochrome camera cooled to -10C, William Optics Space Cat 51 apochromatic refractor (250mm FL @ f/4.9).

Posted October 26, 2024

A spectacular night with the glow of the Aurora Borealis. This one came as a burst of energy across the sky that reached across the zenith and headed south. Ursa Major/Big Dipper at the lower left.

Posted October 11, 2024

Some strong geomagnetic storminess from our star gave us some beautiful auroral activity on the night of May 10th and into the morning of the 11th. I shot a batch of images at different times, mostly with my iPhone, which did surprisingly well. Both of these are pretty much straight from the camera--I just resized and saved at jpgs.

Posted May 11, 2024

It's lunar photography tonight, with an 83% waxing moon. I'm out with the 8" Newtonian, 800mm FL at f/4 and the ZWO ASI715MC color camera. This is my first experience with the 715, so far so good, considering average atmospheric seeing--lot of turbulence up there. And these two are just single unstacked shots. I have a pile of SER files to process in AutoStakkert.

The Newt with the new ZWO 715:

Posted December 22, 2023

Top right is a structure composed of a batch of dark nebulae clustered around the reflection nebula Messier 78 (M78, NGC 2068), about 1,350 lightyears away, and bottom left is LDN1622, the "Boogeyman Nebula" about 500 lightyears away. And the wide ribbon running between them, mostly ionized hydrogen and interstellar dust, is part of "Barnard's Loop", which runs around the Alnitak side of the constellation Orion. 

Imaging Notes: 49 x 300-second subs taken with the ZWO ASI071MC color camera (cooled to 0°C, gain 0) and the William Optics Redcat 51 apochromatic refractor (250mm FL, f/4.9), Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro mount, ZWO ASIAir Plus astro controller. I shot 94 sub-expsures at 5-minutes each, starting around 7pm and running through the night to about 4am, but ended up tossing almost half of them, stacking the best 49.

Posted December 20, 2023

A wide-field view of Bode's Galaxy (M81, NGC 3031) and the Cigar Galaxy (M82, NGC 3034) about 12-million lightyears away in Ursa Major (the "Big Dipper"). There are a bunch of other galaxies in this view, including NGC 3077 and NGC 2976. The clouds and interstellar dust are in our galaxy and are lit by the surrounding starlight. Imaging Notes: 73 x 300-second sub-exposures taken with the William Optics Redcat51 apochromatic refractor, ZWO ASI071MC color camera cooled to 0°C at Gain 0.

Posted December 19, 2023