Got a chance to try out my new telephoto lens last night… -I’ve been so busy learning about technical terms and techniques of photography that I forgot to pay attention to any notable events in the night sky. Turns out, the Moon made a really close approach to Venus and were only separated by a few […]
In an effort to better and more fully understand the terminology associated with photography and ultimately, astrophotography, I complied a short list of common terms and their definitions as well as some brief examples of their applications. Included are specific examples of my hardware setup and how these terms apply to them directly. Term <tl;dr> […]
Spring Equinox, 2015. Is it weird that one of my favorite times of the day is walking from my car to the building through my work’s parking lot? There are two main reasons for this: It’s always pre-dawn or dawn and the morning has quickly become one of my favorite times of the day. -It’s […]
Sunrise Moon Woke up this morning to a quiet house, feeling refreshed with a beautiful pre-Spring sunrise. Like my dad said this morning, “Birds are singing, ducks are quacking, Spring is just around the corner… finally.” I’ve actually being making an effort to get healthy recently. I’ve said in posts previous that I would like […]
I recently fixed my binoculars and had a chance to test them out tonight. I scanned the skies, checked out blazing Venus, saw Jupiter’s moons, peered into the star nursery that is the Great Orion Nebula, and gazed in awe at the Seven Sisters – The Pleiades. I saw planets and moons, nebulae and star […]
Another beautifully cold morning! The skies were perfectly clear – not a cloud in the sky – and the pastel sunrise colors almost took my breath away as much as the bone-chilling cold air. Why does it have to be so cold when the skies are this nice?! The unfortunate reality is that the skies […]
From Thoreau’s journals: “All nature revives at this season… If a man do not revive with nature in the spring, how shall he revive when a white-collared priest prays for him?” Oh man, it hit me hard this morning. Inspiration. Awakening. The anticipation of Spring. The desire to get outside and experience Life again. Go […]
There’s a planetary conjunction tonight that I would LOVE to get an image of. Mars and Venus will be less than a half of a degree apart, fitting perfectly inside the field of view of my telescope and camera setup. Unfortunately, Mother Nature doesn’t care and has decided to unleash this years biggest snowfall today […]
I see rockets in my future. I haven’t updated my blog in a while; I haven’t been doing anything in the observatory (since it has been so cold!) or anything science related really of note. I have been keeping a daily hand-written journal though it contains nothing worthy of posting online. This weekend however, there’ll […]
Here and Now ran a great segment on NPR yesterday about The 31st National Cowboy Poetry Gathering happening in Nevada. They played an interview recorded at last years gathering of a cattle rancher who “comes from a long line of cowboy poets.” His name is Gaul Steiger and he spoke about how his grandfather was a well-known poet […]