My first shot of tonight's eclipse
ajamesmccarthy posts
How big is Saturn in the sky? Here's a composite image showing how tiny the planet appears.
Jupiter Io, and Europa this evening. See if you can tell which are moons and which are stars!
Messier 78- 20 hours worth of exposures to resolve this
People often ask how these images look without edits, so here it is:
This type of photography is completely different than normal photography. You can't just point and shoot, as these objects are so faint as to be practically invisible. You collect data for many hours, and the image is resolved entirely through processing. This is what that exact same data looks like after a linear stretc...
2021-11-10 21:50:09 +0000 UTC View Post
A few unedited shots from tonight's conjunction
After I spend some time editing I'll share the "HDR" shots I liked the most, but in the meantime here are some that were straight from the camera.
2021-11-08 04:35:11 +0000 UTC View PostThe moon with enhanced elevation- full res
Sorry this one was late folks! I was travelling and the patreon app is awful, always crashes when I try to post images for you. Thankfully I'm home now and can spam your inbox with images again ;)
In case you missed my social posts, this is once of my moon images rendered with enhanced elevation data from nasa, to make the craters POP. A fun project but a little unsettling.
2021-11-05 00:42:06 +0000 UTC View PostCelestial Events through the rest of 2021
Howdy folks! Here's a rundown of what's happening in the sky the rest of the year, but first, a personal note.
This year has turned out to be a difficult one for me as far as producing images goes- between having equipment/weather/smoke issues the first half of the year, then moving states, then nonstop travel... I feel like I've spent the whole year doing everything but what I want to do- which is take pictures of the sky. Everything I've been doing though has been an investment in thi...
2021-11-05 00:40:21 +0000 UTC View PostA remastered version of my favorite waning shot- I call it Southern Moonset
It was too high resolution to post to patreon, so get the full size here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/woys9vfz12aqovu/Southern%20Moonrise%20Remastered%2010x16.jpg?dl=0
2021-10-29 20:18:46 +0000 UTC View Post
From the camera to your feed- the steps each frame goes through.
The raw images as they are captured by my camera. Bit of wind shaking the scope, but looks great otherwise! It is intentionally underexposed, which allows me to reduce bloating of bright features while keeping exposures short to minimize motion blur. Easy to brighten after. Be patient- this may take a bit to load:
Single frame of that video:
2021-10-20 00:47:10 +0000 UTC
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The Iris Nebula- 12 hours of exposures to reveal what the faint interstellar dust looks like.
The Triangulum Galaxy
My first completed deep sky shot from my new backyard in Arizona, This is my favorite galaxy. I'm absolutely obsessed.
If you're in my "aspiring astrophotographer" tier the data for this shot is now available in the "One Shot Color" section of dropbox, along with a few other targets ;)
2021-10-11 01:38:22 +0000 UTC View PostA video of some of my favorite moon images played in sequence. Don't view if you are sensitive to flashing lights.
The horizon of the sun- an image from a few days ago
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Slowly working towards being able to post daily again. A lot of work to do between now and then, between setting up equipment, my office, and just having the time between my other responsibilities. Hopefully soon this will be my priority again!
2021-10-05 16:54:15 +0000 UTC View PostA family Portrait
The Moon, The Sun, and our celestial family in one shot. I couldn't get a picture of Earth for obvious reasons, but the international space station makes for a nice representation of Mankind!
2021-09-21 23:17:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe backside of Jupiter- plus a timelapse!
I captured a timelapse of Europa and its shadow last night. This is about 4 hours of rotation on Jupiter... looped, and every time it loops it gets faster, because why not.
2021-09-20 22:09:12 +0000 UTC View Post
A detailed look at Solar activity from a few days ago. See attached for a 30 minutes timelapse.
An earlier one I never shared, I call it "The Drifting Desert"
A file so large I had to downsize it to finish my edit. Here's "Just a Phase", a 900 megapixel moon.
The full size is a bit oversampled, so I find the 81 megapixel downscaled version really looks nice even though a few detailed areas might be undersampled. I'm sure enough of you may want to see how it looked before downscaling, so I attached it. You may have trouble loading it on your computer. It crashes most programs I open it in.
Get the full size here: https://ww...
2021-09-13 22:46:09 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been watching this group of sunspots make its way around the sun
My first shot of Venus of the season
Like the moon, venus shows phases. Right now it is in a waning gibbous phase, as it will become more shadowed as it rounds the sun towards Earth. This will also make it appear Brighter and larger, counterintuitively. It's still rather small, so I couldn't get the level of cloud detail I would have liked, but you can still see subtle shifts in color along the cloud tops. This was possible by imaging in infrared and ultraviolet, Venus just appears pure white to the naked eye.
2021-09-09 21:20:22 +0000 UTC View PostLast night's 4% moon. Shown here with Venus. This is the highest resolution I've ever done at this phase.
Venus will be joining the moon tonight in a conjunction, but not quite as close as shown here. This is a composite image created from a 10 panel mosaic.
2021-09-09 21:07:54 +0000 UTC View PostAn image that took me 4 months to finish- the Lunar Eclipse tucking behind the mountains
This was complicated to shoot because it involved using shots from multiple telescopes and multiple cameras, with tracked and untracked shots. Editing the final composite image was difficult, and I was never happy with the final product until recently when I approached it with fresh eyes. Hope you enjoy!
2021-09-08 05:08:12 +0000 UTC View PostCelestial Events this Month
There's really not much happening this month in terms of major events, so I'm including events that will be for more advanced stargazers/astronomers. Now that I'm settled in my new place, I'll hppefully capture many more of these!
September 7th- New Moon
Always the best night for stargazing, this is the best time to go check out dark skies in your area to see if you can find the milky way, which will be high in the sky after sunset. Even without a telescope, there ar...