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My Portfolio { 279 images } Created 11 Jan 2013

This gallery contains an eclectic selection of my favourite images from the last few years, both film and digital, of all types of celestial subject. It's my "Greatest Hits" portfolio. It is presented roughly in chronological order, with my newest images first. The captions provide more information.

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Milky Way over Takakkaw Falls (16mm ...jpg
Galactic Core at Dinosaur Park (RF15...jpg
Blue Aurora Panorama – Spherical (Ma...jpg
Blue Aurora Panorama – Rectangular (...jpg
$This is the total eclipse of the Sun of April 8, 2024, in a blend of two exposures to display all the fiery pink prominences that were visible during totality around the lunar disk in one image, set against the bright inner corona of the Sun with the dark disk of the Moon in silhouette in front of the Sun. However, it was not possible to see all these prominences at once. The ones on the left were visible at the start of totality when the Moon's disk would have been covering the prominences on the right. As the Moon moved across the Sun from lower right to upper left here, it covered up the prominences at left and revealed the set of even larger prominences at right. Their pink colour comes primarily from hydrogen emission. Celestial north (not the same as solar or lunar north) is approximately at top in this framing. This blends two exposures: one taken near second contact when the last bit of the Sun's photosphere and pink chromosphere was disappearing at left, with an exposure taken near third contact with the chromosphere and bright photosphere beginning to appear at right. The frames are the last (at C2) and first (at C3) taken in a rapid-fire bursts shot at the two contacts. Both are 1/1000 second exposures at f/6 through the Astro-Physics 105mm Traveler refractor, with no reducer or flattener, and the Canon R5 at ISO 100. They were on the Astro-Physics AP400 mount tracking the Sun. Taken from Lac Brome in Quebec. I cropped the image from the original to enlarge the Sun and Moon on the frame. Sharpening with Topaz Photo AI.$

Eclipse 2024-Ring of Prominences (R5...jpg
$This is a telescopic close-up of the eclipsed Sun at the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, with the Sun's intricate atmosphere, the corona, surrounding the dark silhouetted disk of the Moon. The corona is marked by swirls, loops and streamers shaped by magnetic fields (note the loops around the pink prominences) and exhibits the classic round, symmetrical, and flower-like shape of a solar maximum corona. Peeking out from behind the right limb of the Moon are several bright prominences, pink from bright hydrogen emission. They were most obvious at this eclipse toward the end of totality as the Moon uncovered them on the western limb of the Sun. The corona appears silvery-blue in tone, with the faintly coloured round halo likely coming from atmospheric diffraction effects from the high cirrus cloud the Sun was embedded in for this eclipse at my site in Quebec on the east shore of Lac Brome. Even so, despite the clouds, a few stars shine through: the 5th magnitude double star Zeta Piscium at the 9 o'clock posiiton left of the Sun, and 6th magnitude 88 Piscium at the 8 o'clock position below. I do not see any sign of the SOHO sun-grazing comet in the field. Celestial north is approximately at top in this orientation. This version was created by stacking the aligned frames into a smart object, then applying a mean stack mode averaging blend. I have other versions blended with other methods for a different look. In blending the exposures in this version I accentuated the coronal structures with sharpening, to a level that is more than the eye would have seen looking through a telescope. Even so the result still presents a somewhat "natural" and softer looking image, and making the inner corona look brighter than the fainter outer parts of the corona, just as the eye saw it. Technical Details: This is a stack of 20 exposures, from 1/800 second to 1/2 second, with the Canon R5 at ISO 100 on the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm refractor at f/6 with no reducer or$

Eclipse 2024 - Corona and Prominence...jpg
$This is a telescopic close-up of the eclipsed Sun at the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, with the Sun's intricate atmosphere, the corona, surrounding the dark silhouetted disk of the Moon. The corona is marked by swirls, loops and streamers shaped by magnetic fields (note the loops around the pink prominences) and exhibits the classic round, symmetrical, and flower-like shape of a solar maximum corona. Peeking out from behind the right limb of the Moon are several bright prominences, pink from bright hydrogen emission. They were most obvious at this eclipse toward the end of totality as the Moon uncovered them on the western limb of the Sun. The corona appears silvery-blue in tone, with the faintly coloured round halo likely coming from atmospheric diffraction effects from the high cirrus cloud the Sun was embedded in for this eclipse at my site in Quebec on the east shore of Lac Brome. Even so, despite the clouds, a few stars shine through: the 5th magnitude double star Zeta Piscium at the 9 o'clock posiiton left of the Sun, and 6th magnitude 88 Piscium at the 8 o'clock position below. I do not see any sign of the SOHO sun-grazing comet in the field. Celestial north is approximately at top in this orientation. This version was created by stacking the aligned frames into a smart object, then applying a mean stack mode averaging blend. I have other versions blended with other methods for a different look. In blending the exposures in this version I accentuated the coronal structures with sharpening, to a level that is more than the eye would have seen looking through a telescope. Even so the result still presents a somewhat "natural" and softer looking image, and making the inner corona look brighter than the fainter outer parts of the corona, just as the eye saw it. Technical Details: This is a stack of 20 exposures, from 1/800 second to 1/2 second, with the Canon R5 at ISO 100 on the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm refractor at f/6 with no reducer or$

Eclipse 2024 - Corona and Prominence...jpg
$This is the sequence of the total eclipse of the Sun over the waters of Lac Brome, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada, on April 8, 2024. Onto the base single exposure of the totally eclipsed Sun set in the darkened eclipse sky I have layered in images of the pre- and post-totality partial phases taken every 5 minutes from the start to the end of the eclipse. As the Sun moved across the sky from left to right, the Moon moved across the disk of the Sun from right to left. The twilight sky colours are from the light of the Sun from areas outside the path of totality. This is looking southwest, the direction toward the eclipsed Sun but (to the right) also the direction the lunar shadow arrived from and where the sky brightened first at the end of totality. This was from the Tiffany Park area of Lac Brome in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, on the east side of the lake where several dozen cars and eclipse chasers gathered this day for a fine view. The bright object below the eclipsed Sun is Venus. High cirrus clouds added to the sky colouration and visibility of the shadow passage. The base image was taken near mid-eclipse. It is a single 1/6s-exposure from a 1200-frame time-lapse, with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at f/2.8 and Canon Ra at ISO 125. Sky detail and contrast emphasized with Luminar Neo Enhance filters. The partial phase images, however, are greatly reduced close-ups taken through a telescope, the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm refractor, and through a Baader solar filter. They were shot at 610mm focal length and all 1/800 second (except 1/400 for the thinnest phases) at ISO 100 with a Canon R5. I have resized and placed the partial phases to be fairly accurate to their actual position, eclipse phase, and motion of the Sun across the sky over the roughly 2.5 hours of the eclipse from first to last contact. So these were not taken with the same lens and camera as the main totality image. But it is representative of the actual scene. The wide-angl$

Eclipse 2024-Totality and Partial Ph...jpg
Eclipse 2024-Totality over Lac Brome...jpg
$This is a composite showing the complete sequence of the April 8, 2024 eclipse of the Sun, from first contact (at upper left) to last contact (at lower right), with totality at mid-eclipse in the middle. Time runs from left to right here, with the positioning of the Suns similar to its actual motion in the sky during the mid-afternoon eclipse at my site at Lac Brome in Quebec, Canada. The Sun traveled from east to west (left to right) of course, but also down the western sky. However, the size of the Suns vs. the amount of motion shown here are not to the same scale. They are only "representative" to illustrate the sequence of the eclipse and progression of the partial phases. At left are the partial phases before totality, from the start of the eclipse with the Moon taking the first bite out of the Sun at First Contact, C1, at top, to the thin crescent Sun just before Second Contact, C2 before totality. At right are the partial phases post-totality from the thin crescent just after Third Contact, C3, to the end of the eclipse at Fourth Contact, C4, at bottom. The partial phase images were from a complete set of bracketed exposures taken at 1-minute intervals, but here with images selected that were taken 5 minutes apart, with the exception of the three on either side of totality when the crescent Sun changes very rapidly – those are at 2-minute intervals. The sequence shows the progression of the Moon across the solar disk, moving from right to left (west to east) across the Sun due to the Moon's orbital motion around Earth. So the Moon first contacted the Sun at the 4 o'clock position on the solar disk, and departed it at the 10 o'clock position in these images which have celestial north roughly at top. I shot all the images with the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm refractor at 600mm focal length and f/6, with the Canon R5 at ISO 100. The partial phases are 1/800 or 1/400 second exposures through a Kendrick/Baader solar filter. I colorized them a pale yello$

Eclipse 2024-Totality and Partial Ph...jpg
Eclipse 2024-Totality and Contact Co...jpg
Simeis 147 Supernova Remnant (Borg77...jpg
$This frames the famous Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster (aka Messier or M45) set amid a dusty starfield in Taurus. The blue stars of the Pleiades are surrounded by bright blue reflection nebulosity, most prominent below the lower star Merope, a bit of nebula catalogued separately as NGC 1435. The odd horizontal spike above Merope is real and is catalogued as van den Bergh 20. While the Pleiades light up the core of the dust clouds bright blue, the dust clouds extend much wider and permeate the entire constellation of Taurus. However, the outlying clouds are very faint as they have no nearby source of illumination. As such, they show up only in long-exposure photos processed to enhance their appearance, as here. The arc of nebulosity at top is most obvious. It was found by E.E. Barnard in the early 20th century and is catalogued as IC 353. I framed the field to include it, placing M45 at lower right, at the intersection of Rule of Thirds composition lines. The field is about 4.7° by 3.2°. This is a stack of 30 x 6-minute exposures with the Astro-Tech AT90CFT refractor at f/4.8 (using its 0.8x Reducer) and the filter-modified Canon R camera at ISO 800, though no filter was used for these frames. Taken on a very clear night from home on November 18, 2023. Autoguided with the MGEN3 stand-alone guider on the Mach1 mount. Applications in Photoshop of luminosity masks created with Lumenzia, and the Nebula Filter action in the PhotoKemi action set, and the Detail Extractor filter in the Color EFX module of the Nik Collection 6 extensions helped bring out the nebulosity. Mild applications of the Orton Sharp and Dynamic Stretch actions from the AstroPanel X extension panel added a touch of additional glow.$

M45 the Pleiades in Dust (AT90 RMod).jpg
$This is the reflection nebula called the Witch Head Nebula, but officially IC 2118 (also with the catalogue number NGC 1909), near the very bright star Rigel, at lower left in Orion. But the nebula is over the border in Eridanus the River. Hot blue-white Rigel is the source of illumination lighting this dusty nebula. Some faint magenta emission nebulosity also populates the field in Orion. This is a stack of 29 x 6-minute exposures through the Astro-Tech AT90CFT refractor with its 0.8x Reducer for f/4.8, and with the filter-modified Canon R camera at ISO 800. No filter was employed here. Taken from home on a very clear night November 17/18, 2023, though with the field getting low in the southwest for the final frames in the set. Autoguided with the MGEN3 guider on the AP Mach 1 mount. Applications of luminosity masks from Lumenzia, a PhotoKemi Nebula Filter action, a Detail Extractor filter from the Nik Collection 6 Color EFX, and a mild glow enhancement with a Radiant Photo filter (the latter two applied to a starless layer created with RC-Astro Star XTerminator) brought out the nebulosity in this rich region of sky. Being so bright, Rigel is creating some glow and flaring in the optics. I should also have aimed the scope a little lower to compose the scene with Rigel and the Witch Head a little higher in the frame.$

IC 2118 Witchhead Nebula & Rigel...jpg
$This is a portrait of a field of dusty nebulas in northern Cepheus, well off the Milky Way but still rich in faint nebulas. At top is an object popularly called the Dark Shark Nebula for its resemblance to a menacing shark. The dark "head" of the Shark is the dark nebula LDN 1235, from the Lynds catalogue. The blue nebula on top of the Shark is the reflection nebula van den Bergh (vdB) 150. Another reflection nebula, vdB 149 sits below the Shark near a very orange star. At the bottom of the frame is a long, snake-like dark nebula Barnard 175, with the blue reflection nebula vdB152 at its tip. This has been dubbed the Wolf's Cave Nebula. To the left of the Wolf's Cave is a dim magenta and blue arc catalogued as DeHt5, from the obscure the Dengl-Hartl catalog. It is either a planetary nebula or supernova remnant. The entire field is filled with dark brownish dust. This is a stack of 30 x 6-minute exposures (= 3 hours) with the Astro-Tech AT90CFT refractor at f/4.8 and filter-modified Canon EOS R camera at ISO 800, though no filter was used when taking these frames. Taken from home on a very clear night November 17, 2023. Autoguided with the MGEN3 stand-alone autoguider on the Mach1 mount. Applications of luminosity masks with Lumenzia and the Nebula Filter action from the PhotoKemi action set, and the Detail Extractor filter from the Nik Collection 6 Color EFX plug-in brought out the nebulosity.$

vdB150 & 152 Nebulas in Cepheus ...jpg
$This is the bright blue reflection nebula, NGC 7023, aka the Iris Nebula, in Cepheus, amid a region of dark and faintly glowing clouds of interstellar dust. The bright red star at upper left is the variable star T Cephei. This is a stack of 25 x 8-minute exposures through the Askar APO120 refractor at f/7 with the 1X Flattener, and with the filter-modified Canon R camera at ISO 1600. No filter was employed here. Taken from home on a very clear night November 10, 2023. Autoguided with the MGEN III guider on the AP Mach 1 mount. Applications of luminosity masks from Lumenzia, a PhotoKemi Actions Nebula Filter action, and a Detail Extractor filter from Nik Collection 6 Color EFX (the latter two applied to a starless layer created with RC-Astro Star XTerminator) brought out the faint background nebulosity and dark nebulas in this dusty region of sky.$

NGC 7023 Iris Nebula (APO120 RMod).jpg
Northern Cygnus Nebulosity (RF135mm ...jpg
Cygnus Landscape Panorama (RF135mm R...jpg
$The Local Group spiral galaxy, Messier 33 in Triangulum, with some of its star forming nebulas showing up as green-blue Oxygen III regions in its spiral arms. This is a stack of 30 x 6-minute exposures, with the Starfield Optics Géar115 f/7 apo refractor taken as part of testing the scope, with its 1x Adjustable Field Flattener for the scope's native 805mm focal length, and with the stock 45-megapixel Canon R5 at ISO 1600. Autoguided and dithered with the MGEN3 autoguider on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. No dark frames or LENR applied on this chilly night in December 2022. Noise reduction with RC-Astro Noise XTerminator; star reduction with RC-Astro StarShrink. Galaxy details were enhanced with applications of: a masked High Pass Sharpen filter, Starizona's Galaxy Enhance action, and PhotoKemi Dark Details action. All stacking, alignment and processing in Photoshop.$

M33 Triangulum Galaxy (Géar115 R5 w...jpg
$This is the totally eclipsed Moon of November 8, 2022 set in the stars of Aries, with the planet Uranus nearby, visible as the greenish star about three Moon diameters away from the Moon at the 10 o'clock position. Uranus was at oppostion the next night, November 9, at magnitude 5.6. I shot the set of images for this scene at about 3:28 a.m. MST, about 20 minutes after the start of this long totality, so the right (lunar eastern) limb of the Moon was still fairly bright. The field of view is about 7.6° by 5°. This is a blend of four exposures to compress the dynamic range and record the stars while maintaining the Moon more as the eye saw it. I blended a 5-second exposure at ISO 1600 for the stars, with 1-, 2-, and 5-second exposures at ISO 200 for the lunar disk, all with the Canon Ra on the SharpStar 61mm EDPH refractor with the Reducer/Flattener for f/4.6. The scope and camera were on the Star Adventurer tracker, turning at the sidereal rate for the long exposure for the stars but at the slower lunar rate for the shorter, lower ISO exposures for the Moon. Blending was with old-fashioned manual masking, not HDR routines or even luminosity masks. It was -25° C this night, and with several inches of snow having just fallen that day, so I kept the gear complexity to a minimum. However, using a 280mm focal length scope on the tracker was pushing it. Most long exposures for the starfield were trailed. I shot several sets of "HDR" exposures to be sure I got one that worked.$

Total Lunar Eclipse in Starfield (No...jpg
Lake Louise by Night.jpg
Milky Way Over Lake Louise.jpg
Milky Way Over the Athabasca River P...jpg
Peyto Lake at Night Panorama.jpg
Cygnus & Cepheus Nebulosity (28-...jpg
Cygnus Nebulosity (28-70mm with Ha).jpg
Milky Way over Star Party.jpg
Cygnus and Cepheus Nebulosity (28-70...jpg
Eclipsed Moon Below Pleiades - Nov 1...jpg
$The well-known North America Nebula (NGC 7000), with the smaller Pelican Nebula (IC 5067) to the right, in Cygnus, taken in the deep red light of hydrogen and rendered here in monochrome. This shows the rich detail and structure in the nebulas. This is a stack of 16 x 16-minute exposures with the Canon EOS Ra, on the SharpStar 94mm EDPH refractor with its f/4.5 flattener/reducer lens. The camera had a 12nm Astronomik clip-in H-a filter installed. The images were shot over two nights and with the Moon up for most exposures. Autoguided with the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone guider. In processsing I used Lumenzia 10 to create luminosity masks on Curves layers to bring out the nebulosity. An application of the Star XTerminator plug-in for Photoshop created a starless layer that was blended back in selectively to eliminate or suppress stars to help accentuate the nebulosity and structure, but without a fully starless image which often shows pockmarked artifacts where the stars were. A high pass filter further snapped up the dark lanes and streaks. A colour grade adds the slight blue tint for artistic effect. All stacking, alignment and blending with Photoshop 2022.$

NGC 7000 (SS94 Ra).jpg
$This is a 140° panorama of the northernmost section of the Milky Way, from Auriga at left to Aquila at right. Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus and Cygnus are across the centre. I added in labels on the mosaic for the constellations, and major nebulas and star clusters. Surrounding the panorama is a collage of close-up images of the major emission nebulas (and one dark nebula) pointing to the area in the wide-field mosaic. The close-ups were shot with various astrographic telescopes such as the William Optics RedCat 51mm and Sharpstar 61, 76 and 94mm refractors, usually employing filters such as the Optolong L-eNhance and IDAS NBX. The background panorama was shot on October 30, 2021, but the close-ups were shot on various nights over two years from 2019 to 2021. The panorama is a stitch of 4 segments, each a stack of 8 x 4-minute expsures at ISO 800 with the Canon Ra and with the RF 28-70mm lens at 28mm and f/2.8. It was on the Star Adventurer Mini tracker. Another panorama of 4 segments taken through a Kase StarGlow filter and layered in added the glows on the bright stars.$

Autumn Milky Way & Objects Colla...jpg
Cygnus Starclouds and Nebulas (RF28-...jpg
Equinox Sunset (Sept 22, 2021).jpg
$A portrait of the complex of emission nebulas in central Cygnus near the bright star Gamma Cygni (at left). The field includes the IC 1318 complex around Gamma Cygni itself and the Wolf-Rayet arc of nebulosity, NGC 6888, aka the Crescent Nebula, at right. The sparse star cluster Messier 29 is at bottom. This was through the SharpStar 94mm apo refractor at f/4.4 and with the Canon EOS Ra. It is a blend of 6 x 6-minute exposures at ISO 1600 through an Astronomik UV-IR-Cut filter for the base image, and a stack of 4 x 12-minutes at ISO 3200 through IDAS NB1 and Optolong L-eNhance filters for the enhanced red nebulosity, plus 6 x 12-minutes at ISO 3200 through Optolong L-eXtreme and IDAS NBZ filters which contribute only the enhanced cyan OIII emission, all taken as part of testing the filters. Normally, using four filters would not be required! Autoguided and dithered on this warm summer night with the Lacerta MGEN3 autoguider. No darks or LENR applied as the dithering effectively eliminated the thermal noise speckling which was prominent on the individual sub-frames. Taken from home August 13, 2021. All stacked, aligned, and blended in Photoshop.$

Gamma Cygni & NGC 6888 (SS94 EOS...jpg
Milky Way over Upper Waterton Lake (...jpg
$This is the supernova remnant in Cygnus known as the Veil Nebula, here in its entirety, from the eastern arc at left, catalogued as NGC 6992/5, to the western arc at right, NGC 6960, running past the star 52 Cygni. At top is the wedge-shaped "Pickering's Triangle.," but discovered photographically by Wiliamina Fleming, one of the Harvard "computers." The field is filled with lots of little nebula bits and shrapnel-like fragments. All are remains of a star that exploded as a supernova some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago and is about 2,400 light years away. The red is emission from ionized hydrogen, the cyan emission from ionized oxygen. This nebula shows a lot of oxygen emission at the leading edge of the expanding cloud of debris. This is a blend of three stacks of exposures: -- 10 x 8 minutes at ISO 3200 through an Optolong L-eXtreme very narrowband filter which lets through just green-blue oxygen III and red hydrogen alpha wavelengths -- 8 x 8 minutes at ISO 1600 through an Optolong L-eNhance narrowband filter which lets through a broader bandwidth of light at those two main wavelenths, OIII and Ha -- 8 x 6 minutes at ISO 800 through no filter which records the full spectrum of light All were with the Canon EOS Ra through the SharpStar 94mm apo refractor at f/4.4 with its reducer/flattener and using an AstroHutech filter drawer between the flattener and camera to aid filter swapping. The L-eNhance set was taken June 11 until clouds intervened; the other 2 sets were taken the next night June 12. There was only about 2 hours of semi-darkness at this time of year from my latitude of 51° N. Guiding was with the MGEN3 stand-alone auto-guider (which applied a 5-pixel dither or image shift between each exposure) and William Optics 30mm guidescope. So impressive results less than 2 weeks from solstice at my latitude, made possible by the filters. With the dithering, no LENR or darks were applied, despite this being a warm-ish night. The L-eXtreme set contributes the$

Veil Nebula Complex (SS94 EOS Ra wit...jpg
Milky Way over Cameron Lake (June 2,...jpg
Scorpius over Mount Custer (85mm EOS...jpg
Nebulas in Monoceros (RedCat EOS Ra).jpg
Nebulas in Orion (RedCat EOS Ra).jpg
Moonrise at Dino Park Composite (85m...jpg
Moonrise over Dinosaur Park.jpg
Autumn Sky 360° Panorama (Spherical).jpg
Small Sagittarius Starcloud and Area...jpg
$The often-photographed (certainly by me) area of the North America Nebula, NGC 7000, near the bright star Deneb, which is in the frame at right, in Cygnus. The Pelican Nebula, IC 5067/70 is right of the North America, in the “Atlantic Ocean” so to speak. The nebulosity at bottom is the “Cygnus Arc,” IC 5068. The small patch of blue reflection nebulosity at top is IC 5076. The patches of dark nebulosity above the North America Nebula are B352 and B356. This is a stack and blend of: four exposures without a filter, each 8 minutes at ISO 800, and four exposures with an Optolong L-Enhance nebula filter to bring out the faintest nebulosity, each 16 minutes at ISO 1600. These are blended in with a Lighten mode. All were with the William Optics RedCat 51mm astrographic refractor at its native f/5 and Canon EOS Ra camera, the factory filter-modified camera capable of recording this type of hydrogen-alpha emitting nebulas. Guided with the ZWO ASIAir and ASI120MM guide camera, on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. Taken from home on a perfect summer night on August 15, 2020.$

North America Nebula NGC 7000 (RedCa...jpg
Comet NEOWISE at Columbia Icefields ...jpg
Milky Way at Howse Pass Viewpoint (3...jpg
NLC Panorama from Home (June 7, 2020...jpg
Cygnus Starcloud (WO51 EOS Ra).jpg
Orion in H-Alpha Light (50mm).jpg
M42 Orion Nebula (HNT150 EOS Ra with...jpg
Horsehead Nebula and Orion Belt (HNT...jpg
M35 and IC443 (HNT150 EOS Ra & L...jpg
M36, M38 and IC 405-417 in Auriga (7...jpg
$The Heart Nebula (aka IC 1805) at right, and the Soul Nebula (aka IC 1848) at left, in Cassiopeia. The round nebula at top right is NGC 896. The star cluster at right embedded in the Heart Nebula is NGC 1027. Shot from home in Alberta on November 21, 2019. This is a stack of 16 images, half of the set shot through a light pollution reduction filter to suppress sky background and enhance the colours of the nebulas, particularly in the red end of the spectrum from H-alpha emission. The eight filtered shots are all 8-minute exposures with the Canon EOS Ra mirrorless camera at ISO 1600, and through the Borg 77mm f/4 astrographic refractor at f/4 with an IDAS LPSv3 filter in place. The 8 unfiltered shots are all 8-minute exposures as well but at ISO 800 (with no filter the images require less exposure) and with the same camera and scope but without the IDAS filter for a set of “natural light” images. Blending the two versions provides the benefit of the enhanced nebulosity of the filter but the better colour balance of the unfiltered shots. The EOS Ra camera features a factory-modified IR block filter that transmits a higher level of the red H-alpha visible light, making such a photo possible. The additional IDAS filter does bring out the fainter parts of the nebulas but tends to make the nebulas quite “in-your-face” red, rather than present a more balanced look with magenta and blues adding to the colour. This was shot from a fairly dark rural site, so the IDAS filter wasn’t essential for urban sky glow suppression but for nebula enhancement. All images aligned and stacked in Photoshop 2020. We don’t need no Deep Sky Stacker.$

Heart and Soul Nebulas (EOS Ra 77mm ...jpg
$A composite of the November 11, 2019 Transit of Mercury across the disk of the Sun, on a day with no sunspots on the Sun. The temperature was about -20° C to -15° C this morning but the sky was perfectly clear. This takes in the last 2.5 hours of the 5.5-hour event. The Sun rose at 7:50 a.m. MST this morning from my location in Alberta, Canada, with the transit in progress. But for the first 45 minutes or so the Sun’s image was so distorted from atmospheric turbulence that Mercury recorded only as a fuzzy blur. So images from mid-transit at 8:19 a.m. were not usable. I was not going to “fake in” images from later in the set. The 16 images composited here start at 8:32 a..m. MST, at left, shortly after mid-transit, and end with Mercury just beginning its egress of the disk at right at 11:02 a.m., with images for the composite selected at 10-minute intervals. I actually shot frames every 15 seconds for a possible time-lapse, for 700 images in total. North is up here, with Mercury moving from left to right, east to west, across the Sun above the ecliptic which itself is angled up in relation to the cardinal directions. All were with the Canon EOS Ra camera in its cropped-frame mode, and taken through the Astro-Physics 130mm apochromatic refractor at f/6 for 800mm focal length, on an equatorial mount tracking the Sun, and through a Kendrick Mylar solar filter. The image is further cropped in processing. The yellow tint to the Sun was added in processing.$

Transit of Mercury Composite (EOS R).jpg
$A composite of the November 11, 2019 Transit of Mercury across the disk of the Sun, on a day with no sunspots on the Sun. The temperature was about -20° C to -15° C this morning but the sky was perfectly clear. This takes in the last 3 hours of the 5.5-hour event starting at 8:05 a.m., just before mid-transit at 8:19 a.m. MST. The Sun rose at 7:50 a.m. MST this morning from my location in Alberta, Canada, with the transit in progress. But for the first few minutes the Sun’s image was so distorted from atmospheric turbulence that Mercury recorded only as a fuzzy blur. As it is, the disks of Mercury from early in the morning are soft and distorted. The 37 images composited here start at 8:05 a..m. MST, at left, 12 minutes before mid-transit, and end with Mercury just beginning its egress of the disk at right at 11:02 a.m., with images for the composite selected at 5-minute intervals. I actually shot frames every 15 seconds for a time-lapse, for 700 images in total. The images are stacked in Photoshop with the Darken Color blend mode. North is up here, with Mercury moving from left to right, east to west, across the Sun above the ecliptic which itself is angled up in relation to the cardinal directions. All were with the Canon 60Da camera, and taken through the Astro-Physics 105mm apochromatic refractor with a 2X Barlow giving f/12 at 1200mm focal length, on an equatorial mount tracking the Sun, and through a Thousand Oaks metal-on-glass solar filter. The yellow tint on the Sun is what the filter provides.$

Transit of Mercury Composite (60Da).jpg
Aurora in Twilight at Prelude Panora...jpg
Aurora in Twlight over Prelude Lake ...jpg
Aurora over Ramparts Falls (Sept 8, ...jpg
Aurora over Yellowknife Panorama (Se...jpg
Galactic Centre at Grasslands (35mm ...jpg
Aurora Panorama from Grasslands (Aug...jpg
Milky Way at Eagle Butte, Grasslands.jpg
Milky Way over the Old Barn (June 30...jpg
$The 4-day-old waxing crescent Moon on April 8, 2019 in a blend of short and long exposures to bring out the faint Earthshine on the dark side of the Moon and deep blue twilight sky while retaining details in the bright sunlit crescent. This is with the 105mm Traveler refractor and 2X AP Barlow lens for an effective focal length of 1200mm at f/12, and with the cropped-frame Canon 60Da at ISO 400, in a blend of 7 exposures from 1/30 second to 2 seconds, blended with luminosity masks from ADP Pro3 extension panel in Photoshop.$

Four-Day-Old Moon with Earthshine (A...jpg
Winter Sky Setting at Dino Park Pano...jpg
Night Train at Morants Curve (March ...jpg
Orion Setting over Victoria Glacier ...jpg
Orion over Lake Louise by Moonlight ...jpg
7-Day-Old Moon (March 13, 2019 - C9....jpg
Eclipsed Moon And Umbral Shadow (Jan...jpg
Stargazing at Grasslands (Landscape).jpg
Milky Way Reflections at Bow Lake.jpg
Star Trails over Bow Lake.jpg
Moon & Venus Conjunction at Stor...jpg
Milky Way and Flowers.jpg
Mars over Middle Waterton Lake.jpg
Waning Moonrise with Aldebaran and P...jpg
Planet Panorama at Solstice Pond (Ju...jpg
Milky Way Over Vimy Peak.jpg
Milky Way over Writing-on-Stone.jpg
Liberty Schoolhouse with Star Trails.jpg
$Venus low in the evening twilight between the Hyades (left) and Pleiades (right) star clusters in Taurus, on April 27, 2018. I shot this from the Horsethief Canyon viewpoint on the Red Deer River north of Drumheller, Alberta. This is a stack of 6 x 13-second exposures at ISO 400 for the ground to smooth noise, and one 8-second exposure at ISO 800 for the sky to minimize trailing. All at f/4 with a 35mm lens on the Canon 60Da for increased red sensitivity in the sky colours. The smaller f/4 aperture added the diffraction spikes on Venus “naturally” in camera.$

Venus, Pleiades and Hyades in Twilig...jpg
Orion Setting over Calgary Skyline (...jpg
$The waxing crescent Moon, with the darkside lit by Earthshine, a binocular field south of Venus, bright as an evening star. This was April 17, 2018, from near home in southern Alberta. This was with the Nikon D750 and the old 1970s vintage 105mm f/2.5 Nikkor lens at f/2.8. This is a single 5-second exposure, untracked. To be artistic I added diffraction spikes on Venus with Astronomy Tools actions, and an Orton-style glow effect with Luminar effects plug-in.$

Waxing Moon and Venus (April 17, 201...jpg
Rising Easter Full Moon Composite.jpg
All-Sky Aurora from Norway #1.jpg
Total Lunar Eclipse – January 31, 20...jpg
$Orion and the winter stars, including Sirius and Procyon, on a clear winter night in downtown Calgary and shining over the pedestrian Peace Bridge over the Bow River. I shot this on January 20, 2018. This is a real scene, though the sky is a single longer exposure of 13 seconds, while the ground is a blend of 4 exposures from 2 to 8 seconds, all at ISO 100 and f/2.8 with the 14mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750. No light pollution reduction filter was used here, as none fit over the large lens of the 14. The ground images were blended with luminosity masks generated with ADP Pro v3, to prevent the lights on the bridge from blowing out too much. Star diffraction spikes added with Astronomy Tools actions.$

Winter Stars over Peace Bridge (14mm...jpg
Geminids (Dec 13, 2017 - Southwest).jpg
Geminid Meteors 2017 (Tracked Compos...jpg
Norway Aurora Nov 7 - Over Island.jpg
Steve Auroral Arc (Sept 27, 2017).jpg
$A composite of the August 21, 2017 total eclipse of the Sun, showing the second and third contact diamond rings (far left and far right) and Baily’s Beads at the start (left) and end (right) of totality, flanking a composite image of totality itself. The diamond ring and Baily’s Beads images are single images. The totality images is a blend of 12 exposures from 1/1600 sec to 1 second, stacked as a smart object and combined using the Mean stack mode to blend the images. Several High Pass filter layers were added to sharpen and increase the contrast in the coronal structures. Regulus is the star at lower left. Placement of the images only roughly matches the actual position and path of the Sun across the sky. However, the time sequence runs from left to right. All taken through the 105mm Astro-Physics Traveler refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener, yielding f/5 at 500mm focal length, wide enough to capture Regulus at left. All with the Canon 6D MkII camera at ISO 100. Shot from a site in the Teton Valley, Idaho, north of Driggs.$

2017 Eclipse Composite - Contacts &a...jpg
$A composite of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse showing third contact – the end of totality – with sunlight beginning to reappear and the array of pink prominences along the limb of the Sun. Seconds later the emerging Sun and diamond ring overwhelmed the large prominence. Regulus is at lower left. This is a composite of two images taken seconds apart: a 1/15th second exposure for the corona and a 1/1000 sec exposure for the prominences and chromosphere. Taken with the 106mm Astro-Physics apo refractor at f/5 and Canon 6D MkII camera at ISO 100. On the Mach One equatorial mount, polar aligned and tracking the sky.$

2017 Eclipse - Third Contact Composi...jpg
$Here is my composite image of the 2017 total solar eclipse, from a range of exposures from 1/1000 second to 0.4 second, to retain details in the inner corona while bringing out faint streamers in the outer corona fading off into the sky. The blue sky contains several stars, including first magnitude Regulus at left, a rare sight at any eclipse. The disk of the New Moon illuminated by Earthshine is also faintly visible. As such, the image shows a bit more than the eye saw, as the Earthshine is usually not visible to the eye, as it is overwhelmed by the bright inner corona. However, in other respects I have tried to retain a more “natural” appearance to the merged images, to replicate what the eye did see, both naked eye and through binoculars. I’ve avoided a more garish or overly sharpened image, as interesting and scientificially useful as those can be for revealing the finest structures in the corona. The location was the Teton Valley north of Driggs, Idaho off the West 5000 road on the Wydaho Lane. I shot the images through a 106mm Astro-Physics refractor with a 0.85x Reducer/Flattener for an effective focal ratio of f/5 and focal length of 500mm. The camera was the Canon 6D Mark II, at ISO 100. The telescope was on a polar-aligned equatorial tracking mount. Even so, some manual alignment of images was required, mostly due to the motion of the lunar disk relative to the Sun. This is a composite of 7 images blended with luminosity masks applied using ADP Panel+ Pro extension for Photoshop. Adjustment layers of successively smaller High Pass filters were also added to bring out the coronal structure. I tried both merging images with HDR software (Photomatix Pro 6) and with stacking images as a Smart Object and applying a Mean stack mode. While both methods did produce a good result the HDR image exhibited edge artifacts, as HDRs often do, while the stacked smart object lacked detail in the inner corona, and allowed no control over the relative contr$

2017 Eclipse Composite (Luminosity M...jpg
$Here’s a variation on creating a time-sequence composite of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. In this case, time runs from left to right, from the last filtered partial phases I shot, through unfiltered shots of the rapidly changing last glimmer of sunlight disappearing behind the advancing Moon at “Second Contact,” forming “Baily’s Beads, to totality at centre. The sequence continues at right with the Sun emerging from behind the Moon in a rapid sequence at “Third Contact,” followed by two post-totality filtered partials to bookend the total eclipse images. The C3 limb had a beautiful array of pink prominences. The Contact 2 and 3 images were taken in rapid-fire continuous mode and so are only fractions of a second apart in real time. Most are 1/4000th second exposures. The totality image is a blend of 7 exposures, from 1/1600 second to 1/15 second to preserve detail in the corona from inner to middle corona. These were aligned, and merged into a smart object and blended with a Mean combine stack mode. It is not an HDR image. I added a couple of layers of High Pass filtering to sharpen structure in the corona. The partials are 1/2500-second exposures through a Thousand Oaks metal-on-glass solar filter for the yellow colour. All were taken through an Astro-Physics 105mm apochromatic refractor with a 0.85x field flattener/reducer for an effective focal length of 500mm at f/5. The flattener added some flares off the diamond rings. The telescope was on an AP Mach One equatorial mount, aligned and tracking the sky, a rare circumstance for me for any total solar eclipse. The placement of the frames here only roughly matches the actual position and motion of the Sun across the sky during the time around totality. Partials and C2 and C3 images layered into Photoshop and blended into the background totality image with a Lighten blend mode, and masked to reveal just the wanted bits of each arc. The site was north of Driggs, Idaho in th$

2017 Eclipse Composite - Time Sequen...jpg
$A composite of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse assembled using the HDR program Photomatix Pro v6. The composite is from 11 exposures, from 1/1000 to 0.4 seconds. All taken with the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor at f/5 and 500mm focal length with the Canon 6D MkII at ISO 100. In addition to the HDR set, I layered in a 12th exposure taken just before third contact, blended with Darken mode and with a luminosity mask to reveal just its contribution of the inner corona and prominences, to better show the prominences along the western limb that were so dramatic visually. Without this exposure layer the prominences were being washed out by the HDR blend, as good as it was. Photomatix 6 does a very good job merging the corona features and nicely compressed the dynamic range producing a natural result. I used the Contrast Optimizer mode and a Realistic preset to start, then varied the settings considerably to yield a final result that looked natural and best resembled the visual appearance, without undo exaggeration of contrast and excessive sharpening that, while it might reveal more coronal structure, lends an over-cooked and noisy appearance to the image. There’s no point in me saying exactly where all the sliders were set, as any images you try to merge will be different, requiring a different combination of settings. Even so, Photomatix, while it did a much better job than Photoshop’s HDR Pro and other third party HDR programs such as Aurora HDR (which did a poor job), did have its flaws. Notably, it produced badly aliased edge effects along the limb of the Moon despite the images being registered and aligned. This is a common flaw of HDRs along high-contrast edges. So, to remove or hide the worst of the HDR edge artifacts, I’ve performed a cheat here and artifically darkened the disk of the Moon and its limb with mask. Which is why I recommend using luminosity masks instead to merge images, though they are more work and do result in a lo$

2017 Total Eclipse (Photomatix Contr...jpg
Eclipse over the Tetons - Second Con...jpg