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June 24 2024

Fuji X-H1
Barnard's star take #4? It's been too long.
There's a GIF comparing 2022 and 2024.


May 10 2024

Surprise! Aurora from North Carolina.
Fuji X-H1


May 26 2023

3rd year of Barnard's Star. Not much to say here, but you can clearly see the
movement now.
1s f/5.6 ISO 6400
100 light frames, 30 dark frames
Deep Sky Stacker


May 29 2022

After 8 months, I finally decided to bring out the camera
again. Included here is a GIF of my exposure from May 1st
last year compared to the exposure I took today. The GIF
shows the slow movement of Barnard's Star.

- Barnard's Star is the 4th closest star to the sun.
- It moves 10.3 arcseconds per year relative to the sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard's_Star

Included is a tar.gz file including the lights/ and darks/
used to generate the resulting image.
ISO 6400, 1s, F5.6
Lights: 78
Darks: 20

Processed with DeepSkyStacker on Windows
https://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/5945450


September 11 2021

Smith Mountain State Park, Virginia
Bortle 4


August 29 2021

Another exposure of Barnard's Star, just to check
if I could notice any small movements.

I compared it with my picture from May.

I think I see a variable star

RA 18h 05m 25.8s
DEC +05:13:15

J2000: 271.3575 5.22083333


Also, I think I may have gotten some movement out of
Barnard's Star. It might not be movement, but if it is,
then it's a very small amount of it.


June 23 2021

A second exposure confirms that my recent
finding was not a camera error, but a variable star.

ISO 6400 1s f/5.6
50 light / 10 dark
Bortle 8

variable.gif:
All of my pictures of this star. You should be
able to see the star changing in brightness.

closer.gif:
In case the first one is too small, this
compares two shots, showing that the star
clearly dimmed in the later one.

I scoured tons of star catalogs, and I could only find one
source documenting this star:
http://astro.corlan.net/stars/OPH/SV-OPH.html

It's right beside Barnard's star, a common target.
Surely this star should be more popular...


Jun 19 2021

While taking a picture of Barnard's Star, I noticed this.
These were taken 50 days apart, and the star is not there in the
newer picture.

ISO 6400 1s f/5.7
50 light frames, 20 dark frames
Stacked in DSS

Explanations sorted by likelihood:
- crud on camera sensor
- processing glitch
- Variable star, or dust
- It just disappeared or something
- Aliens???

https://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/4792721

RA: 17h 56m 24.6s | Dec: +03:22:41


May 1 2021

Barnard's Star

> Barnard's Star is a red dwarf about six light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
It is the fourth-nearest-known individual star to the Sun after the three components of the Alpha Centauri system,
and the closest star in the northern celestial hemisphere. Its stellar mass is about 14% of the Sun's.
Despite its proximity, the star has a dim apparent magnitude of +9.5 and is invisible to the unaided eye;
it is much brighter in the infrared than in visible light.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star

Canon 1300D
ISO 6400
1s
f/5.6
50 Light frames
20 Dark frames
Stacked in deep sky stacker

I didn't use a star tracker, only constellations and public data.
This was very difficult in a Bortle 8 city with a target near the horizon.

You can find additional information at:
https://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/4605499


December 21 2020

December 20-21
The "Christmas Star"
Saturn and Jupiter align. This happens once every ~20 years, but
this happens to be the closest since the 1700s.

The GIF was made from 8 frames, ISO 6400 4s f/5.6, manually
stacked with GIMP

The JPG is just a compressed image from my camera, edited slightly
with GIMP


November 21 2020

ISO 3200 f10 1/800s Manually tracked, 300mm Canon DSLR
I took ~40 pictures of the ISS, removed the bad ones, and ended up with ~30.
I manually aligned them in GIMP, and exported to GIF.


November 2 2020

ring.jpg
The Ring Nebula is tiny. A real telescope would be needed in order to get
details. But you can see, it is a blue thing, with a hole in it.

dumbbell.jpg
Dumbbell Nebula
~70 1 sec exposures
stacked with 20 dark frames
bortle 7


October 18 2020

Very good visibility. I was near a big lake, and in one picture you should be able to see
the Milky Way reflection in the background. From the pictures I took that night, I am making
a map of the milky way.


October 17 2020

90 light frames:
90mm
2 second exposure
f/5.7
6400 ISO

50 Dark frames
(same with lens cap)

Taken at home (bortle 7/8)


October 6 2020

Messier 32
A simple image showing a long exposure of Messier 32, near the central galaxy.

Greensboro North Carolina.
Bortle 8.


September 6 2020

Trip to Blue Ridge Parkway, testing light pollution
on the milky way


June 5 2020

ISS and moon photography


May 6 2020

Moon


April 18 2020

Photo dump from Blue Ridge Parkway


Mar 25 2020

Common spring targets


Jan 21 2019

Jan 2019 Blood Moon


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