AstroDad's Stellar Adventures

09/03/2023

Golden Hour!

05/01/2020

The human eye has a fixed exposure 1/60 of a second with an aperture (Iris) that opens and closes very slowly over time to let more or less light in when go from light to dark places. In short, our eyes don't have very high dynamic range. Watch a cat's eye change so fast in bright light...great range. Anyway, our unaided eyes can only see the illuminated Moon at night. A high dynamic range image can show the Sun direct illuminated side AND the eerie Earthshine (from Sun) illuminated Moon as in this High Dynamic Range image I just created from seven different exposures. Read the FLICKR caption for details.

The Moon fully exposed through High Dynamic Range processing. While only 0.425% of the face is illuminated. Note Lunar-X (Thanks fellow NASA SSA Mark Baker), A series of overexposed through underexposed image in sequence of seven images from 1/640 sec through 1 second at ISO 400 through AT-130 refra...

02/04/2019

Just received confirmation from ALPO’s Coordinator of Lunar Meteoritic Impacts, Brian Cudnik, that my image DID in fact capture the impact during the January eclipse.

01/23/2019

Astrodad captured the meteor impact during the Eclipse! I found the evidence on a playback of the live stream of the event. This is not from one of my images, but a screen shot of an MP4 video. See the little white smudge at the end of the white line.

01/22/2019

If you missed the live eclipse stream last night you can see the composite image of my work here. This is a fairly large image suitable for framing any cave at 20x16 FEET!

Total Lunar Eclipse 20-21 January 2019. Imaged through AT-130 at f/6 (780mm focal length) using Canon 60Da camera. Image is a composite illustrating the seven phases of the eclipse.

01/20/2019

AstroDad will be imaging the 20-21 January 2019 Total Lunar Eclipse. Stand by for news!

06/17/2018

Jupiter was showing off a bit the other night at 9:48 in this wider field with my 11-inch Celestron and ZWO ASI-224MC planet cam at the scope's native f/10 (2,800mm focal length). The Great Red Spot (GRS) was just past the central meridian with Io just departing transit but leaving an inky eclipse shadow. Note how it is elliptical due to the Sun angle. Callisto is over the pole and mighty Europa at left. Clearly Jupiter had nothing better to do on the night of 15 June than to show off its magnificence!

12/03/2017

Of course AstroDad nailed the 2017 Super Moon!

2017 SuperMoon, 10hr 57min before fullest extent. From Rockwall, TX. AT130, Canon 60Da, 1/1,000sec shutter speed at ISO 100, Telescope: f/6, D=130mm, f=780mm. Nailed it!

11/12/2017

The Cocoon Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus.The nebula itself is about 15 light years across and it is illuminated by the central star which is though to be about 100,000 years old, think of a flourescent light. Surrounding the nebula, and trailing off to the left of the image, is the dark nebula Barnard 168 whose dark dust obscures
any background stars.

Widefield Cocoon Nebula and Barnard 168 dark nebula. 170-minutes total time through AT-65EDQ with Canon 60Da at ISO800 Sept 28-9 TAS Dark Site.

11/12/2017

AstroDad's image of Eta Carinae and surrounding nebulosity. This was captured from my team at the Tzec Maun Observatory and astronomers believe this humongous star could explode at any time.

40-minute integrated exposure (300s subexposures) of The Great Carina Nebula captured from Siding Spring Observatory, NSW Australia 3 March 2015 using Takahashi FSQ-106 and SBIG STL11000C. This spectacular diffuse nebula in the southern constellation Carina is not well known to astronomers in the no...

11/12/2017

Cosmic showpieces have sold at auction.