Origin Story: Where the Gold in Your Ring Comes From
Where does the gold in your ring come from? Its atoms began before Earth, likely forged in neutron-star mergers, then concentrated by hot fluids, weathering, and rivers.
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NightSkyLens
Deep-sky images, observing notes, and workflow details from my backyard astrophotography setup, including the long project of imaging the Messier catalog.
25Finished images
8Blog posts
3Workflow articles
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M104 Sombrero Galaxy
A bright edge-on galaxy with a crisp dust lane and central glow, captured as part of the long-running Messier imaging project.
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Image GalleryGalaxies, nebulae, lunar images, and catalog targets captured through my changing setup.
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How I Make ImagesHow I plan targets, set up the gear, capture data, and process stacked frames into a finished image.
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Sky MapSee where my images sit in the night sky, with object thumbnails, coordinates, and links back to the related notes.
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The Pleiades and the Blue Dust They Borrowed
The Pleiades are famous for their bright blue stars, but the blue glow around them comes from something quieter: dust reflecting their light. This is the story of how that reflection nebula emerged across three versions of my image.
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New Telescope First Light: Seeing M51 in a New Way
This image marks first light with my new telescope, the Celestron EdgeHD 800, an 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain designed for longer focal length imaging.
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Beyond the Belt: Exploring Orion’s Nebulae
The Orion constellation is easy to recognize, marked by three bright stars forming its belt and a "sword" hanging below. What's less obvious is that this small patch of sky is packed with a variety of nebulae. That sword is home to the Orio
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Celestial Photobomb: Vesta and the Monkey Head Nebula
I set out to capture the Monkey Head Nebula (NGC 2174 in Orion) with my usual astrophotography setup, aiming for a gorgeous deep-sky image. I took 70 frames at 300 seconds each (about 6 hours total exposure) and stacked them to reveal the n
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Galaxy Portraits: A Collection of Distant Worlds
My wide-field telescope is well suited to large nebulae, but most distant galaxies appear small in the frame. Even so, long exposures and careful stacking have revealed distinct structure in a surprising range of galaxies. Every image in th
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