It was wonderful to attend my niece’s’ wedding last month in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, specifically near the glacially-formed Lake Skaneateles, NY. I’ve loved watching this young lady become the amazing mom, entrepreneur, and now wife to Owen. It was truly a special weekend I’ll long remember. Continue Reading to see the full gallery of images I took at the event.
Continue reading Dylann & Owen’s WeddingSome targets earn their reputation. M81 and M82 — Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy — are staples of the spring sky, the kind of pair that shows up in every beginner’s first light report and every veteran’s “I need to do this one properly” list. I finally got around to doing it properly.
A Galaxy Group in the Cosmic Neighborhood
What you’re looking at in this image isn’t just two famous galaxies. It’s a whole gravitational family, the M81 Group, a collection of around 40 galaxies bound together by mutual gravity, sitting roughly 12 million light-years from Earth. That sounds impossibly far, but in the grand scheme of the universe, it makes them close neighbors. Our own Milky Way belongs to a similar family called the Local Group, which includes Andromeda, the Triangulum Galaxy, and a few dozen smaller satellites. The M81 Group and our Local Group aren’t gravitationally bound to each other, but they’re near-neighbors in the same larger cosmic structure, the Virgo Supercluster. Think of them as two small towns in the same county.
Continue reading Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar: A Deep Dive into Ursa Major’s Cosmic NeighborhoodIf you’ve ever looked up at the winter sky and noticed a tight little knot of blue-white stars, you’ve already met the Pleiades. M45 is one of those objects that’s been observed, mythologized, and photographed more times than almost anything else in the sky — and yet there’s a reason people keep coming back to it.
Continue reading M45: The Pleiades 🌟This one has been on my radar for a while — and I finally did it justice.
I’ve pointed a telescope at the Cone Nebula before, but from my Bortle 8 backyard in Atlanta, I couldn’t pull much out of it. Light pollution is the enemy of faint nebulosity, and this region has plenty of both. Moving my rig to Starfront Observatories out near Brady, Texas — where the skies are genuinely dark — changed everything. Nearly 48 hours of integration time later, this is what came back.
Continue reading The Cone Nebula, Christmas Tree Cluster & Hubble’s Variable Nebula 🎄🔭
