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
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
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
