Aurora Borealis Over Fermilab - 08 Nov. 2004

This light show started on 07 Nov. 2004 and continued into the next morning. It was produced by one of the most powerful Solar Storms ever recorded (top 10) See: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2006SW000281 for many more details. I drove into the middle of the Tevatron/Main Ring at Fermilab and looked W-NW for this image. It was taken with a 5-MP Canon S50, which I hope supporters the notion that it's the person behind the camera, and not the camera that makes the image. Once in a life-time solar storms help a bit too. This picture is easily among my most viewed ever and I'm still proud of it.

Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) & Wilson Hall

Comet & Fermilab's Wilson Hall. Captured early in the morning on 13 July.

Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) Above Fermilab

Foreground: Main Injector Synchrotron; Horizon: Wilson Hall. Captured early in the morning on 13 July.

Lunar Eclipse Over Adlar Planetarium - Chicago 2015

In 2015 I went to the Adler Planeetarium to photogarph a total lunar eclipse. The event lasted hours and there were many people coming and going. I had two cameras - one with an 800mm telephoto lens and another with a 24-70 zoom. I used the telephoto lens to capture the image of the moon and the zoom lens at 65mm to capture the foreground. From there I adjusted the size of the moon to be properly scaled to the foreground. This gives all the details and sharpness of the telephoto image, but scaled down the the angular size our eyes see (about 1/2 degree). Needless to say this is a composite image meant to represent what it looked like that night, in between the walls of clouds that interrupted the event.

Milkyway & Andromeda Rising Over Yosemite Valley & Half Dome.

We took a family trip to California. Yosemite was on the agenda and it was a new moon. This is an outer arm of the Milky Way along the Andromeda galaxy rising over Half Dome. Also visible are Vernal & Nevada Falls in the right corner. Image captured at Washburn Point. Stayed up late and traveled a long way to get this vantage point and scene.

Andromeda Galaxy - M31 + a Pine Tree in My Yard

Milky Way Over CTIO

Eta Corinae Nebula Rising Over Cerro Pachon - Chile

I've made about five or six different versions of this shot, but none of them fully satisfied me until this one. To make the sky I combined 20 15-second exposures and layered that against a single foreground image from the set. The aspect ratios are preserved as well as the orientation of the sky with respect to the horizon. In this image one can find the constellation Crux (aka Southern Cross), the Eta Corenae Nebula, various open star clusters. The massive fuzzy patch rising above the horizon from bottom right to upper left is the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way galaxy. The two bright stars above the lower right horizon are Beta-Centuri (aka Haden) and Alpha Centuri (aka Rigel Kent). The dark splotches in the sky are not photographic imperfections; they are clouds of dust so dense they block the light of stars behind them. Every star in this picture belongs to our own Milky Way - just like our Sun. On the ridge at bottom left one can see the silhouettes of the Southern Astronomical Research Telescope (SOAR); the Southern Gemini Observatory, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is under construction at the time of this image (2016).

Southern Star Trails Over the Dorm at Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory.

This is a second pass at a star trail shot using a technique that fades the trails and uses a single image to punctuate the end of the trail.

Large & Small Megellanic Clouds above the Blanco 4-m telescope

The Large and Small Megellanic Clouds are satellite galaxies to our own Milky Way galaxy. They are only visible in the Souther Hemisphere. The Blanco telescope is a 4-meter aperture beast and is the largest of the telescopes at the Cerro Tololo International Observatory (CTIO) near La Serena, Chile.

Pleiades and Orion Rising over CTIO

Star trail image featuring the constellations Pleiades and Orion rising over the 1-meter Yale Telescope atop Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

Tax Day Lunar Eclipse Progression 2014

Lunar Eclipse Progression - 15 April 2014 Over Fermilab's Wilson Hall. During the mid-teens there was a string of four total lunar eclipses over a period of like 18 months or something fun. Three of the four were nicely visible from the middle of N. America. This particular one was visible for almost the entire process lasted about 5.5 hours with totality lasting about 77 minutes. The weather the afternoon before this eclipse was cloudy and it continued into the mid-evening that way. I decided to get to sleep early and wake up to check conditions around midnight. At 1 AM the sky was very clear and the eclipse had started! For lack of a better plan I drove into Fermilab and set up at the end of the reflecting pond for a few hours on a very chilly April morning. About 5AM a security guard saw me and and asked what I was doing. I explained the picture to him and after a little prodding/begging/pleading he agreed to drive a couple laps around the pond with his lights on so I could get a long exposure shot of it. His effort really adds to the shot! Visible in the sky are the Moon, the star Spica (just below and right of the moon) and the planet Mars (right corner). Thirty exposures for the moon; probably three to six for foreground - I honestly cannot remember.

Oct. 8, 2014 Lunar Eclipse Over Wilson Hall

A composite of the first half of a lunar eclipse as seen over Fermilab's Wilson Hall. 27 moon shots spaced by roughly five minutes.

Star Trails Over Devils Tower

Star Trails Over Cerro Tololo Dorm

Looking S-SW Over Cerro Tololo Dorm. Bonus points if you find the viscacha in the foreground.

Milkyway, Meteor & Joshua Tree - Joshua Tree National Park. 2009.

Moonrise Partial Eclipse

Partial lunar eclipse captured during moonrise.

Comet C2011/L4 AKA "PanSTARRs" over Fermilab's Wilson Hall on March 13, 2013

Tent against the Milky Way in Sand Flats south of Moab, UT.

Milkyway across the Pacific Ocean; North of Cambria, CA 2009