Astrophotography and the curse of clouds

Astrophotography of the night sky above Francis E. Walter Dam in White Haven, PA

A couple things going on here on the astrophotography front that I thought I would post about… Firstly, I bit the bullet and placed an order for some new gear. I got a Sky-Watcher EQ6 Mount and a Williams Optics Red Cat scope for use with my Sony A7Riv. Both of these are on back-order, […]

NEOWISE – Chasing the Comet

Comet Neowise seen in the upper left of the photo. Taken at Flagstaff Overlook, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania

Not unlike other amateur astronomers and photographers, I have been outside every night trying to capture images of Neowise (a.k.a. C/2020 F3). Unfortunately, like most I’ve chatted with, I’ve also been fighting and frustrated by clouds and weather interference. If I was the paranoid sort, I would start to think the clouds are purposefully blocking […]

Astrophotography at Francis E. Walter Dam

Astrophotography: Night Skies at Francis E. Walter Dam - White Haven, Pennsylvania

Updated 24 April 2020: I added a third image from the night’s astrophotography shots with an amazing purple hue from the light pollution. Stacked from 16 lights and 5 darks in Starry Landscape Tracker, edited in On1 Photo. Continue reading the original post for information. Yesterday I received the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Pro mount which […]

Milky Way Processing in On1 Photo Raw 2018

Final Milky Way Image processed through the steps in this tutorial

Bringing the Milky Way to Life As I’ve posted previously, I have been intrigued by astrophotography and photographing the Milky Way for a while, but really never took the plunge. A lot of the information on the interwebs make learning this almost cult like… there are secret handshakes, obscure references and seemingly mystical processing steps […]

Bitten by the Astrophotography Bug!

Francis Walter Dam Milky Way: II - 09052018

Is there a cure for this Astrophotography Disease? Having recently gotten back into my photography hobby addiction, I seem to have developed a bad case of the infamous Astrophotography bug. Symptoms include insomnia, hyper-caffeination, mumbling to oneself about cloudy skies, cursing the dawn, and chasing the Milky Way. If you see someone with this condition, give […]