Astrophotography by the Numbers: 1,302 Hours Under the Night Sky
An interactive look at 94 targets, 28,744 light frames, 209 observing nights, and 1,302 hours of captured exposure—the data behind my astrophotography archive.
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Field notes from under the night sky.
What I captured, what I learned, and what went into each finished image.
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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The Veil Nebula: A Massive Star’s Explosive Legacy
The Veil Nebula is a supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan). It represents the visible remains of a star that exploded in a supernova thousands of years ago. This vast nebula stretches across an area of sky about 3 degrees
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Andromeda Galaxy Astrophotography: Neighbor to the Milky Way
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) was one of my first deep-sky imaging targets. I captured it over several nights, stacking hours of exposure time to reveal its spiral structure, dust lanes, and glowing core.
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