AmazingSky
PO Box 2039 T1P 1K1 Strathmore, AB, Canada

Nightscape expert and author Mike Shaw provides a good rundown on what to shoot and when to shoot it for 2021. Check it out! https://youtu.be/t4Wu7YBkV6E

Watch an incredible time-lapse video of the motion of Mars over the last few months as it performs its classic retrograde loop. Uranus is thrown in for free! From the master of such composites, Tunç Tezel. https://vimeo.com/507033143

This could help replace the capabilities of the lost Arecibo Radio Observatory. https://greenbankobservatory.org/successful-test-paves-wa/

Here's a link to my review of one of the most popular sky trackers on the market, the iOptron SkyGuider Pro. It does the job but has its mechanical quirks. Check it out at AstroGearToday. Thanks! And do share! https://astrogeartoday.com/deep-sky-tracking-ioptrons-skyg/

The astronomy world is abuzz with anticipation at the news of the first comet to be discovered in 2021, C/2021 A1 by astronomer G. J. Leonard at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona. Dozens of comets are discovered each year but this one MIGHT become bright in December 2021 as it approaches Earth and begins its swing around the Sun. Perihelion is Jan. 3, 2022. In early December 2021 the comet will be well-placed in the pre-dawn sky for the northern hemisphere. But how bright Comet Leonard will become is hard to predict. Comets can dazzle or fizzle. Best estimates now suggest naked-eye brightness.

A star tracker is a great accessory for nightscape photography, and for wide-field deep sky photography, for beginners and veterans alike. The Star Adventurer is a popular model and the new 2i version has WiFi and can be programmed via an app. My review appears here at AstroGearToday. Do share! https://astrogeartoday.com/deep-sky-tracking-the-wifi-enab/

It's an Eyepiece Extravaganza! I am selling a flock of premium eyepieces, most 82 and 100 models (Stellarvue, Televue, Meade, Celestron, ES, Omegon and more) via All-Star Telescope. Most are in "Like New - Open Box" condition and were purchased last year for testing and review. Others are older but in pristine condition. Check out the sale at http://www.all-startelescope.com/sales/index.php?cPath=127 There are also telescopes, a binoviewer, a Star Adventurer Mini tracker and other goodies for sale. Do share!

A portrait of the wonderful winter sky rising from home on January 9. With and without labels.

The trio of Jupiter (highest and brightest), Saturn (in the middle), and Mercury (lowest) in the evening twilight on January 9, 2021. Technically, Mercury was a magnitude and a half brighter than Saturn, but due to its lower altitude appears about the same brightness here as Saturn. Jupiter was naked eye but it took binoculars to show the other two planets. This is a single exposure with the 135mm Canon lens and Canon EOS Ra. I shot this from home in Alberta at latitude 51 N, so the planets were very low. I added labels to this version.

A wide-field image of the region of Perseus and Taurus from the pink California Nebula (NGC 1499) at top, to the blue Pleiades star cluster (M45) at bottom. In between and surrounding the main bright objects are many tendrils of interstellar dust clouds, varying in shades of brown and pale blue. Around the Pleiades the faint clouds reflect some of the lblue light of the young stars, but away from the Pleiades the clouds take on a warm reddish tone, or appear as just dark fin...gers blocking all light from behind. At centre right are some brighter patches known as IC 348 around the star Atik, aka Omicron Persei. The glow at left in the darkest cloud is IC 2087. The small star cluster at upper right is NGC 1342. This is a stack of 30 x 4-minute exposures with the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800, and the low-cost Rokinon 85mm f/1.4 lens at f/4 and shooting through a NISI Natural Night light pollution filter, a mild broadband filter. All stacking, alignment and processing with Photoshiop 2021, with luminosity masks created with Lumenzia v9 extension panel , which was very helpful in bringing the faint dust clouds out from the dark background. No dark frames or LENR applied on this cool winter night.

An image with some unusual colour contrasts for a deep-sky image with blue Bellatrix, a green comet, and the huge red Lambda Orionis nebula. This is Comet ATLAS (C/2020 M3) seen here as the green glow above the bright blue star Bellatrix in the shoulder of Orion, and approaching the large diffuse red nebula surrounding the head star of Orion, Lambda Orionis. aka Meissa. The large nebula complex is catalogued as Sharpless 2-264. At right, above the comet, is the smaller em...ission and reflection nebula catalogued as vdB (vandenBurgh) 38. The sparse star cluster surrounding Lambda Orionis is Collinder 69. This was the night of November 15/16, 2020, with the comet moving rapidly northward a day after its closest approach to Earth and three weeks after its perihelion, or closest approch to the Sun. On the next nights the comet would have been within the nebula. This is a stack of 8 x 8 minute exposures without a filter, blended with 6 x 15-minute exposures through an Optolong L-Enhance narrowband nebula filter, to bring out the faint nebulosity. The comet image itself is from just one of the filtered frames layered and masked to reveal just the comet. But even in the single 15-minute exposure its image trailed slightly as its motion was quite rapid. I used a filtered shot for the comet as its green/cyan glow did pop out more than in the unfiltered shots, though the more usual cyan colour of a comet has been altered a little by the narrowband filter and its bandpass of the green OIII lines. All were with the William Optics RedCat 51mm astrograph at f/4.9 and with the Canon EOS Ra, with the filtered shots at ISO 3200 and unfiltered shots at ISO 800. Images were autoguided, with dithering, using the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone autoguider. I also used its polar alignment routing this night to refine the mount’s polar alignment and it seemed to work! All images stacked, aligned and blended with Photoshop.

A star trail image with the main trails at centre of Jupiter (brightest) and below it dimmer Saturn setting together in the southwest twilight sky on January 3, 2021. Stars add the other trails above in the darker sky from the later frames in the sequence. This was more than 10 days after their very close Great Conjunction, though the two planets were still quite close in the evening sky. This is a stack of 950 frames taken over 45 minutes at 2-second intervals with manually ...increased exposure time throughout. All with the 85mm Rokinon lens at f/4 and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 100. Stacking was direct from the developed raw files with the now sadly discontinued Advanced Stacker Actions Plus action set. Processing was with LRTimelapse to equalize and ramp the settings to smooth the transitions for the purposes of a time-lapse movie. The ground and band of dark clouds are from a stack of 10 frames from early in the sequence when it was brighter, stacked to smooth noise. See more

I present a short 1m45s video with time-lapses and still images of the rising of the Cold Winter Moon of December 29, 2020 from Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. Do watch in 4K! The description on the Vimeo page provides the details. Do share! Thanks! And Happy New Year! https://vimeo.com/496459644

This is a rich region for star clusters and nebulas on the Cassiopeia-Cepheus border: The bright open star cluster Messier 52 is at upper left, and below it is the Bubble Nebula, NGC 7635. Below the Bubble is the aptly named Lobster Claw Nebula, Sharpless 2-157 showing subtle shades of red and pink. The small bright nebula to the right of the Bubble is the unnamed NGC 7538. The large nebula at upper left is the Cave Nebula, Sharpless 2-155. However, the entire field is filled... with faint nebulosity as well as small intense red patches. A small yellowish star cluster at lower right is NGC 7419. This is a stack of 10 x 8-minute exposures through the William Optics RedCat 51mm f/4.9 astrographic refractor with the red-sensitive Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800, and blended with a stack of 4 x 15-minute exposures through the Optolong L-Enhance narrowband filter, with the EOS Ra at ISO 3200, to make up for the nearly 3 stops loss of light from the filter. But it really pops out all the faint nebulosity. This was the first use of the add-on filter drawer from Starizona, which facilitates adding and removing a 48mm filter into the light path without having to remove the camera and risk field rotation. It worked very well. Guiding was with the Lacerta MGEN 3 stand-alone autoguider, which also controlled the camera shutter and applied dithering of 10 pixels between each frame to reduce thermal noise without having to apply LENR in camera or dark frames. However, the temperature was -16 C this night so thermal noise was likely low anyway! But the dithering doesn’t hurt! All images were stacked, aligned and mean combined in Photoshop with the filtered set blended with a Lighten blend mode. Taken from home November 12, 2020, using the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount.

A collection of astrophotos of all types that I've taken in 2020 from Alberta and elsewhere in the world.

This week normally elusive Mercury is easy to find at dawn below bright Venus. On the mornings of Nov 12 and 13 the waning crescent Moon will be in the area above Venus on Nov 12 and just above Mercury on Nov. 13. This was the view this morning, Nov 9, at about 6 am, on a very clear morning following a day of blizzard conditions.

A single bright moondog to the left of the waning gibbous Moon, located on a 22 ice crystal halo around the Moon, but a partial halo visible only where the clouds are. This was November 4, 2020. The Moon was in Taurus. The Hyades and Pleiades are visible in the clear sky.

For photographers wanting to try their hand at incorporating celestial sights in their landscape images, the Moon is a great place to start. Here’s a fine tutorial from one of my favourite camera reviewers on YouTube, Gordon Laing in the UK, with his Camera Labs channel. https://youtu.be/pGYaT99OtVs