Jupiter has been at opposition lately and closer to the Earth than it usually is and has thus has been quite bright in the night sky lately. Jupiter at opposition means that the Earth is directly between Jupiter and the Sun and not only is the Earth as close to Jupiter as it gets, but… Read More Jupiter from the Driveway
Several months ago I was hiking at Colorado Bend State Park (in Texas, not Colorado) and went up the Windmill Trail. I took a few phone photos at the time and thought about how this would look on a clear night in the summer with the Milky Way in the sky. It is summer now… Read More Camping to See the Milky Way
On Thursday I spend most of the day driving to Badlands National Park in South Dakota. It was not a direct route at all so I got to see a lot of farm land, but I eventually made it to the park. Badlands is a very scenic park with a lot of convenient overlooks from… Read More Badlands National Park
If you want to see the core of the Milky Way, you have to view it at the right time of year. As the Earth orbits the sun, the galactic core rises and sets at different times throughout the year. In the Northern Hemisphere this means that in the dead of winter the galactic core… Read More Milky Way at Lost Maples
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
After more than a week of mostly cloud cover, Tuesday afternoon the clouds blew out and left the evening sky quite clear. Tired of being in the house, I sat in my back yard and noticed how clearly I could see Orion and decided to try to get better a better image of the Orion… Read More Photography from Home – Orion
I have been wanting to take better picture of the stars in the night sky. My method up to this point has basically been to shoot as long an exposure with as low an ISO as I could get away with and try to process a single exposure and live with the noise (see The… Read More Star Stacking
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
I have been wanting to get out and take some night sky photos of the Milky Way this summer, but the weather and my personal schedule have not cooperated with me. So I watched the weather all week and made a plan for Friday night at Pedernales Falls State Park west of Austin. Pedernales Falls… Read More Night Sky at Pedernales Falls State Park
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
Jason Frels 