Phil's Astronomy Blog

Obviously a fantastic part of the sky, imaged by many! I really wanted to get a lot of data of this region now that the observatory was up a...

Astronomy has been an on and off hobby for me, but since moving out to rural Texas, it's been more on than off, and that was the intent....

Okay, time to get the blog up to date! I'm not even sure if anyone comes here any more but I'll keep it going all the same. Over t...

Last year was a bit of a bust. Between the weather, work and family, there weren't too many opportunities to get out under the night ski...

Well, we finally got some clear skies over the past week, and I have been able to get out and observe. The conditions have been great, w...

Ah, the Geminds. Lovely to watch, difficult to capture! This time of year, the weather makes for bad dew conditions, so having a couple of c...

Taken in rural, northwest Arkansas, United States. This is about two hours of star trails, composed of individual 30 second images...

Hi Folks, I often get asked about how start out shooting stars with basic equipment, like the modern DLSR camera body and an 18-55mm stoc...

Folks familiar with trying to use Nikon DSLRs are probably aware of the so-called "Star Eater" effect that afflicts the cameras. T...

For quite some time I have been contemplating a new DSLR. I love my D40 - a LOT! It has been a great camera. Lightweight, fairly versatile f...

Instead of working on a research paper last night, I was going through some old astronomy images and tried running them through some HDR sof...

I learned a new trick about gradient removal. The original Lulin image below shows a light gradient on the right-hand side. This is probably...

In one of the Yahoo! groups that I am a member of, someone posted a shot of the moon but it was a lovely, colorful image. He had tweaked th...

Below is the second image that I took last night. To be honest, it may be one of my best astrophotos ever - I am quite chuffed with it! Obvi...

...well, maybe not quite like Hubble! But since my failed attempt at M31, I have been doing some research on how to best take images using t...

So I have had a little bit of fun with taking a few photos through the LX200 with the Nikon D40. The results have been fine, not brilliant b...

Having a late night... These two images were shot last night. This is my first attempt at a reflection nebula. The Lagoon is in the Sagittar...

So, today I purchased a Nikon D40 Digital SLR! It's a big move for me. I've been relying on point-and-shoots and modified webcams b...