The Horsehead Nebula. 70 5-minute exposures = 6 hours . Filters: SII, Ha, OIII. 120mm telescope.

The Orion Nebula. This was created using 80 5-minute exposures. 40 images with a Hydrogen Alpha filter, 20 with an Sulphur II filter, and 20 with an Oxygen III filter. Imaged with a 120mm telescope located in my remote observatory in Boulder, Utah. I created a script that automated the imaging so I could sleep. :)

My latest astrophoto: The Heart Nebula. This is a composite of two images with a total exposure time of 13.5 hours. I used Ha, SII, & OIII filters on a 120mm telescope. The field of view is 2.4 x 2.4 degrees - the moon is 0.5 degrees wide.

Black Boulder Observatory. #astrophotography #scopedome #celestron #skywatchertelescope #primalucelab #zwocameras

Inside my observatory. A 120mm telescope on the left. A 11" telescope on the right. The observatory shutter is opening and data is being acquired. Several hours are needed to take good astrophotos - often images are acquired over multiple nights. 5 to 20 hours for each final image. Then there are hours of processing needed. It's a lot of work but also very satisfying. #astrophotography #scopedome #celestron #skywatchertelescope #primalucelab #zwocameras

The North America Nebula. My first full narrowband HSO (Hydrogen Alpha, Sulphur II, Oxygen III) image and the first image shot from my new observatory in southern Utah. Black Boulder Observatory. #astrophotography #northamericanebula #narrowbandfilter #observatory #blackboulderobservatory

Annular Eclipse 2023. Imaged with a 120mm Hydrogen Alpha solar telescope. This was taken several minutes before maximum. The large prominence peeking out from behind the Moon rises above the Sun's surface about 3 times the diameter of the Earth! (see the little Earth icon at the top right for scale) #daystarfilters #annulareclipse #hydrogenalpha #sunphotography

Annular Eclipse 2030. The clouds in this shot make it actually looks like a Ring of Fire. This was imaged with a 60-600mm Sigma zoom lens with a 2x duplicator, it was zoomed at 400mm resulting in a 800mm focal length. I had a polarizing filter on the lens to help knock down of the the intense light. #annulareclipse #annulareclipse2023 #sunphotography #pictureline

Annular Eclipse 2030. Thin clouds were passing over the during the eclipse maximum. Make for a much more interesting photo. This was imaged with a 60-600mm Sigma zoom lens with a 2x duplicator, it was zoomed at 400mm resulting in a 800mm focal length. I had a polarizing filter on the lens to help knock down of the the intense light. #annulareclipse #annulareclipse2023 #sunphotography #pictureline

Annular Eclipse 2023. Imaged with a 120mm Hydrogen Alpha solar telescope. This was taken seconds before the Moon moved away from blocking the Sun. The large prominence at the bottom of the images is what I was hoping to see but doubted the Sun would deliver. Happily it did! #daystarfilters #annulareclipse #hydrogenalpha #sunphotography

The Milky Way. 14mm lens, more that 90° field of view.

The Milky Way. Super-high resolution: 24,000px x 8000px. A panoramic image 6 images taken with a 50 megapixel Canon 5DSr using a 50mm Sigma lens. The camera was on a Rainbow Astro RST-135 tracking mount. Each of the 6 separate images were stacked from 6 to 10 photos - this greatly reduces noise that is inherent in low-light images. Each photo was a 3-minute exposure at 800 IOS. Yeah, it was a ton of work! The last two photos are close-ups.

The Andromeda Galaxy. Our nearest neighbor galaxy - only 2.5 million light years away. This is what it was like 2.5 million years ago! Crazy. Imaged with. Canon 5DSr with a 600mm Sigma lens, on a RainbowAstro RST-135 mount. (Not a great photo, but ok for a quick shot)

The Pleiades. Imaged using a Canon 5DSr camera with a Sigma 600mm lens on a RainbowAstro RST-135 mount. (Not the greatest, but ok for a quick shot)

The Cone Nebula. (False color). Imaged with a SkyWatcher Esprit 120mm telescope, ZWO ASI 2600 camera with a Hydrogen Alpha (<3nm) filter, 1h 55m acquisition time (23 5-minute exposures), on a 10Micron HPS2000 mount (unguided), using PRISM 11 capture software, processed in PRISM 11 & Photoshop.

The Horse Head Nebula. (False color). Imaged with a 120mm telescope, Hydrogen Alpha filter.

Timelapse of solar prominence on the sun.

Sunspots.

2017 Solar Eclipse.

Horsehead Nebula. Imaged with a Celestron 11”, narrowband Ha filter (<3nm), ZWO ASI2600 camera. Imaged and processed with Prism 11, false color added in Photoshop.

Hydrogen Alpha photo of a sunspot region on the sun. My first photo with new gear. Thanks to solar-imaging-legend Simon at Telescopes.net for gear and processing tips! Imaged with a 120mm Sky-Watcher telescope, DayStar Quark Gemini Ha filter, Player One Apollo M-Max camera. #solarphotography #simon2940 #sun #sunspots #woodlandhillstelescopesandcameras

The Eagle Nebula where the famous Pillars of Creation is located. I imaged this a few weeks ago and processed it yesterday during the rainstorm when I was forced to be indoors. - 13 images x 7.5 minute exposures = 1h 38m total acquisition time. (Ha filter, processed with Prism, color added in Photoshop)

North America Nebula. Imaged just before sunrise on 2/20/22. This is only 4 5-minute exposures. The 6th exposure was too bright because of the sun coming up. #northamericanebula #astrophotography #astronomy #zwo #10micron #skywatchertelescope #hyperionastronomy

The Milky Way featuring the North America Nebula. Imaged with a Canon 5DsR on a Rainbow Astronomy RST-135 mount. This is 5 5-minutes exposures. Imaged under super clear skies in Boulder, Utah. #boulderutah #milkywayphotography #astrophotography #astronomy #rainbowastro #canonphotography

The Sun. With a closeup. #solarastronomy #solarphotography #astrophotography #astronomy #zwo #rainbowastro #luntsolarsystems

Closeup of sun spots on the surface of the sun. Imaged with a Ha solar scope. #solarastronomy #solarphotography #astrophotography #astronomy #zwo #rainbowastro #luntsolarsystems

A recent Sun photo taken with a dedicated solar hydrogen-alpha (Ha) telescope. North is up. Notice the clear band from left to right where the equator is. Most solar activity appears mid-latitudes north & south of the equator. #solarastronomy #solarphotography #astrophotography #astronomy #zwo #rainbowastro #luntsolarsystems

The California Nebula. Imaged last night from my backyard in Salt Lake City - under “ok” seeing conditions & a nearly full Moon. #californianebula #astrophotography #astronomy #zwo #10micron #skywatchertelescope #hyperionastronomy

The Rosette Nebula. Imaged a couple weeks ago and finally processed today. Imaged with a Hydrogen-Alpha filter. The colors is artificial - sorry. :) #rosettenebula #astrophotography #astronomy #zwo #10micron #skywatchertelescope #hyperionastronomy

How to get more detail out of Astro Images. #astrophotography #astronomy #zwo #10micron #skywatchertelescope #hyperionastronomy

The Heart Nebula. Imaged last night. 32 5-minute exposures using a Hydrogen-Alpha filter. #heartnebula #astrophotography #astronomy #zwo #10micron #skywatchertelescope #hyperionastronomy

Lunar Eclipse May 26, 2021. Sadly the clouds rolled almost the exact same time the full eclipse started - around 5:00am. I didn't get any good photos of the full eclipse but these cloud images are still pretty interesting. (notice the two stars just to the right in some images) These were photographed in my backyard in Sugarhouse with a Canon 5DSr using a Sigma 60-600mm zoom lens with a 1.4x teleconverter making it 840mm. The images were slightly processed & cropped in Photoshop.

The second image taken by Perseverance. (Processed a lot)

The first image taken by Perseverance minutes after landing on Mars earlier today. I did a little image processing, as amateur astro-photographer tend to do.

The Moon. I shot this image in June 2019 - but just processed it. I realized that this image shows the Apollo 15 landing site so I highlighted the landing site & added some info about the scale. Many time I've been asked if it's possible to see a Lunar Lander on the Moon from Earth. It's not. The Moon is much larger than most people think. • In this photo 4.4 pixels = 1 mile • The Lunar Lander is about the size of 2 cars, 14'x14' • 14,800 cars, or 7,400 Lunar Landers, would fit in one pixel If one pixel in this image was enlarged to be the size of the entire image (about 2000 times bigger), then a car would only be about 8x15 pixels - about the size of one small letter in the text.

The Moon on Thanksgiving Day 2020.

The Moon on Thanksgiving Day 2020.

The Moon on Thanksgiving Day 2020.

The Moon on Thanksgiving Day 2020.

Saturn. I took some images of Saturn way back in July 2016 that I stumbled across while organizing my imaging files. I had previously processed this but it didn't look very good - and I didn't realize there were three moons in the shot! Since then I've perfected my techniques. Telescope: Celestron 11" Mount: Celestron C-GEM. Camera: Celestron Skyris 274M, RGB filters, 5X Barlow Location: Uintah Mountains Processed: Autostakkert, Registax, Photoshop

The Sun.

Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction with a bunch of interesting stats. There will be e test!

Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction.

The Sun. I finally got around to processing a Sun photo from a couple weeks ago. Taken with a Ha 80mm solar telescope.

The Sun. 11/28/20

A new sunspot! I photographed this over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Mars. Photographed a few days ago from my backyard.

I processed another Mars image - my best Mars image so far! This was captured as 9 separate video clips (3 each with R,G & B filters) of 5,000 frames each - a total of 45,000 images. I used a monochrome camera which are more sensitive than color cameras. The best 15% (6750 frames - 750 images per clip) were stacked in Autostakkert then sharpened in RegiStax. WinJupos de-rotated the images and stacked the filtered images. The final red, green & blue filtered images were combined & adjusted further in Photoshop. The telescope used is a Celestron 14" on a Celestron CGX-L mount. I used a QHY PoleMaster camera to polar align the mount; FireCapture to take the images; the camera is a ZWO ASI174MM with a motorized filter wheel. This was captured, Sept. 29 from 1:15 to 1:30am. The same night, same telescope, same camera as my previous post was captured. I used a 5X Barlow lens that increased the size, but didn't change the seeing quality much. The reason for the much improved image is that the upper atmosphere was more stable later that night and there was less lower level atmospheric turbulence as the neighborhood near my home cooled. Also my telescope had cooled for a few hours to reach a greater level of equilibrium with the ambient temperature - removing 'heat wave patterns' on the surface of the primary mirror that can distort the image. All that and just some luck! The best way to get good images is to just take a lot of them - 95% won't be any good.

Here my setup in my backyard for photographing Mars.

I shot 3000,000 images to create this one photo of Mars. Late Monday night I spent a few hours shooting, then today a several more hours processing the images. The seeing was better than most nights in Salt Lake Valley, but not great. The 300,000 images were shot using Fire Capture with a ZWO ASI174MM mono camera through a 14" Celestron telescope. I stacked the best 45,000 (15,000 of each filter: red, green & blue) Autostakkart was used to stack the frames, Registax to sharpen the images, Winjupos to de-rotate & align the three color channels, then finally Photoshop for some fine-tuning. Every two years Mars is at opposition, meaning it's opposite the sun from us. This is when Mars is the largest in our sky and fully illuminated by the sun similar to a full moon. The next opposition of Mars in Oct. 13, 2020. I hoping for some more clear nights over the next few weeks!

The Moon & Mars rising over the mountains east of Salt Lake City.

The full Moon rising over the mountains east of the Salt Lake valley. Shot with a Canon 5DSR using a 840mm lens. It’s sped up 5X.

Th Sun. ...with a sunspot!

Comet Neowise.

Watch the Mercury Transit LIVE on YouTube. Go to Black Boulder Observatory’s channel. 7am-11:03am Mon. Nov. 11

Lunar eclipse...

Lunar eclipse....

Jan 21 lunar eclipse photos. Shot in my backyard with a 300mm lens on a Canon camera.

Northern lights from Norway.

Jupiter with two moon & a moon shadow. This was about a 40 minute time lapse.

Milky Way.

The sun. (Hydrogen-alpha filter)

Orion Nebula. (Hydrogen alpha & oxygen narrow band filters)

Horsehead & Flame Nebulas - my first attempt.

The Moon. Shot Dec. 10, 2017. (14" telescope, ASI1600 camera, RGB filters)

A boy & his toys. (Me taking photos last weekend, cold 18 degree night, 14” Celestron)

Jupiter. Photographed using 11” Celestron telescope, Skyris 274 Camera, RGB filters, processed with Registax & Autostakkart)

The sun. Photographed using an Hydro Alpha telescope.

So finally finished processing a solar eclipse photo.

8.21.17 SOLAR ECLIPSE. Tent setup in the center of Wyoming. (Celestron 14", Celestron 11", Lunt Solar 80mm, & lots of other crap...).

8.21.17 SOLAR ECLIPSE (raw image / processed image)

Eclipse!! (We'll do some proper processing soon)

My telescope setup in preparation to photograph the eclipse!: 11" Celestron Edge HD scope (with Baadar solar filter) and a Canon 5DSR to be controlled with a Mac laptop using Solar Eclipse Maestro (by Xavier M. Jubier) / Lunt 80mm Ha solar scope with a new ZWO ASI1600 camera being controlled by a Windows laptop running FireCapture / both scopes are mounted side-by-side (via ADM accessories) to a new Celestron CGX-L mount.

The Sun. July 8, 2017. IMAGE INFO: Lunt 80mm Solar Scope, ZWO ASI1600 camera, stacked in Autostakkart using a 500 frame video file, enhanced & colorized in Photoshop. (Special thanks to Ian at Opt for info and suggestions about the ZWO camera!!! Great suggestion!)

My Time Machine! I've looked back in time millions of years!! Really. Weird cool, huh?!

Orion Nebula.

3D Moon! Yes, I figured out how to create a 3D photo - it requires using red-blue 3D glasses (Anaglyph 3D). Here's what I did: I took photos on two consecutive nights. The moon wobbles from day to day so that we are viewing it from a different angle everyday - which is required for a 3D image. Using Photoshop, I used one of the images in the 'red channel' and the other in the 'blue/green channel'. (Each of the two images were three separate photos combined in Photoshop / telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 1100 / camera: Canon 60D)

Moon. Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 1100 (11") / Camera: Skyris 274M / 24 separate, 1000-frame video files stacked in AutoStakkert, sharpened in RegiStax, then combined in Photoshop, colored was added from a previously taken photo / final image is 8000 px X 8000 px.

Sun close up. (I added the earth and moon, at their correct distance from each other, at the top left corner for scale)

Milky Way. Camera Canon 60D w/ 24mm lens, mounted to top of tracking telescope for a long exposure / processed: 3 images stitched together, Photoshop (shot in the Uintah mountains, elevation approx 10,000')

Trifid Nebula (M20) Telescope: Celestron 11" / camera: Canon. 60D / processing: Nebulosity & Photoshop

Dumbbell Nebula (M27). Telescope: Celestron 11"/ camera: Canon 60D / processed: Nebulosity & Photoshop

Sun. Telescope: Lunt Solar 80mm telescope / camera: Skyris 274M. (I added the earth and moon, at their correct distance from each other, at the top left corner for scale)