It’s July and that’s Milky Way season around here. July and August give us a lot of clear nights in Texas as well as a lot of hot nights. But, I don’t mind a night of heat to get a good look at the night sky. So, I planned an overnight camp out on a… Read More Milky Way Through the Trees
Big Bend National Park is almost entirely a dark sky site with almost no light pollution. For this reason, I chose to get out to the park on a clear moonless night before summer ended. I have been to other sights with very little light pollution, like Lost Maples State Natural Area, but none as… Read More The Milky Way Over Big Bend
The University of Texas has an observatory in west Texas called the McDonald Observatory. The observatory hosts several star parties a month, in which guest can come see the stars, look through telescopes, and enjoy the dark sky. The kids had a day off of school, so I took the clan half way across Texas… Read More Star Party
One of my struggles with Milky Way photos has been how to edit the photos. I have watched multiple videos online, had discussions on message boards, and experimented in Lightroom (and a few other tools) a bit. For my last round of pictures, I settled on an editing routine that is combination of a discussion… Read More Editing Milky Way Photo
As I mentioned in a previous post, I went to Lost Maples State Natural Area to go hiking and shooting astrophotography. It was a moonless night, it was supposed to be clear, and I wanted to find a nice dark place to take sky pictures. I decided on a hike-in primitive campsite up on a… Read More Shooting the Milky Way
I went out to Colorado Bend State Park Texas to attempt some night sky photos. There was no moon, the forecast called for clear skies, and Colorado Bend has some of the darkest night skies near me. So, I went out and waited until about midnight when the galactic core was to be up in… Read More Night Sky Attempt
It was Thanksgiving and I didn’t really have much time to go out and shoot photos, but I still wanted to write my weekly blog. I did go camping with family on some ranch land that my uncle runs down near Victoria Texas. Like with every ranch there is a stock tank pond and I… Read More Thanksgiving Camping
Friday night I went back to one of my favorite places: Colorado Bend State Park in Texas. It is to the West of the Austin area, and well isolated. You can’t even get a cell phone signal out there, which is nice. I have been there before shooting the waterfalls and the night sky. On… Read More Dark Night at Colorado Bend State Park
A few times I have tried to make time-lapsed videos of the stars moving across the night sky. I have always found this to be a mesmerizing thing to watch in a time-lapsed video. The process is not very hard, just time-consuming. The first step is to find a truly dark place to be on… Read More Time Lapsed Astrophotography
Jason Frels 