Latest entry
The Horsehead and the Flame — Widefield
The Horsehead, the Flame Nebula and Orion’s Belt star Alnitak, in one frame
Read entry →SITREPS ASTRONOMY
A Field Journal Of The Night Sky.
Deep space, shot from a backyard in Lakeway, Texas with an ~$800 smart telescope. Every glowing point below is an object I photographed — mapped where it rides the sky, each paired with a lesson.
Preview images fromFlip to see 17 of these through JWST and 4-meter survey telescopes — same pipeline, professional glass
46 deep-sky objects, each photographed from the backyard and plotted where it rides the northern sky — the north celestial pole at the center, declination rings curving outward, the Milky Way glowing through Cygnus and Cassiopeia. On a computer, hover a point for its plate; on any device, tap to open the entry.
From the first month to now
Same telescope. Same backyard. Six months of staying on target.
How it's made — from raw archive to finished picture →
The two telescopes
- Darth VaderMy black ZWO Seestar S50, shooting since January 2026. Named for Darth Vader, from Star Wars.
- EvaMy white ZWO Seestar S50 Pro, shooting since September 2026. Named for EVE, the robot from Pixar's WALL-E, whose name WALL-E says as “Eva”.
Every entry names the one that shot it.
Barnard 33 — The Horsehead Nebula
A pillar of dust standing in front of a wall of light
“The first night, the target was there and the picture still failed: the frame rotated and the…”
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NGC 7635 — The Bubble Nebula
One star, blowing a bubble seven light-years wide
“One star makes all of this. Its own output clears the space around it and shapes everything i…”
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IC 1795 — The Fishhead Nebula
The youngest corner of the Heart & Soul, still making stars
“I almost left this one out. The Fishhead sits off the edge of the classic Heart & Soul framin…”
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The Heart & Soul — the Widefield Mosaic
A living entry: thirteen panels, three star factories, nearly 32 hours of light
“The first version of this mosaic said there was a gap between the panels and asked for a four…”
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The Veil Nebula — the Full Loop
Nineteen frames, two telescopes: a 10,000-year-old explosion, squared off for print
“Two days ago this was an unfinished picture, published on purpose, with the gaps showing exac…”
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C19 — The Cocoon Nebula
A living entry: a star cluster still wrapped in the cloud that made it
“The stars in the Cocoon are still inside the material that made them. From outside, it looks…”
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IC 1848 — The Soul Nebula
The Heart, a million years further down the road
“Shot one night after the Heart, and the pair now tells a single story in two chapters: the sa…”
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IC 443 — The Jellyfish Nebula
A living entry: 24 minutes became four and a half hours, and a winter to come
“I published this one unfinished, on purpose. Twenty-four minutes of data, one bright arc, mos…”
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C49 — The Rosette Nebula
A living entry: two nights of dual-band light, almost six hours
“Version one was twenty-four minutes with the wrong filter, and it was still the right call. T…”
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IC 1805 — The Heart Nebula
The stars it made are the ones carving its shape
“Every star in Melotte 15 condensed out of this cloud. Now those same stars are the dominant f…”
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Hubble · reprocessedM76 — The Little Dumbbell, from Orbit
Hubble's 34th-anniversary target — reprocessed from the raw archive through my own pipeline
“Look at the lower-left of this frame: the nebula's western wing runs past the edge, because H…”
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Hubble · reprocessedIC63 — The Ghost, Up Close
Hubble on the Ghost of Cassiopeia — reprocessed from the raw archive through my own pipeline
“Everything that shapes this picture is outside the frame. The star carving the ghost, lightin…”
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Hubble · reprocessedThe Veil — The Shock Front, Up Close
One filament of the supernova remnant I shoot from the backyard — at Hubble's resolution
“The bottom half of this image hasn't heard the news yet. The shock front — all the light, all…”
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M100 — The Grand Design, at Survey Depth
Two perfect spiral arms, 55 million light years away — rebuilt from raw survey data
“The spiral arms are traffic jams: the pattern persists while every star in it flows through.”
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M88 — Swimming Through the Cluster
A spiral being stripped by the medium it moves through — rebuilt from raw survey data
“M88 is moving fast through a dense medium, and the headwind strips everything that isn't firm…”
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M104 — The Sombrero, at Survey Depth
A galaxy that is mostly invisible — rebuilt from raw survey data
“Everything that makes the Sombrero formidable is missing from its photo. The dark-matter halo…”
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M51 — The Whirlpool, Rebuilt from Two Colors
A professional telescope with a broken filter, and the honest way out
“One of the survey's three filters was broken across this whole field. I spent hours trying to…”
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NGC 4565 — The Needle Galaxy
What the Milky Way would look like from outside — rebuilt from raw survey data
“We live inside the Milky Way and have never seen it. Every picture of 'our galaxy' is an arti…”
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M101 — The Pinwheel, the Hard Way
Three broken data tiles, two telescopes, and a defect that turned out to be the galaxy
“I spent hours trying to fix a defect that turned out to be the galaxy.”
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JWST · reprocessedNGC 3324 — The Cosmic Cliffs
JWST's most famous frame — pulled from the public archive and run through my own pipeline
“Everything in this picture happens at one boundary: the exact line where the cloud is being t…”
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JWST · reprocessedM16 — The Pillars of Creation
The most famous shape in the sky — reprocessed from the JWST archive through my own pipeline
“The most monumental, permanent-looking shape in the sky is actually a countdown — actively ev…”
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JWST · reprocessedNGC 3132 — The Southern Ring Nebula
A dying star's last act — a JWST first-light image, reprocessed through my own pipeline
“The bright star in the middle is not the one that made this. The nebula was built by the fain…”
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M45 — The Pleiades
Seven sisters wrapped in a dust cloud that was never theirs
“The beautiful thing surrounding the Pleiades isn't theirs. They didn't form in it. They're ju…”
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IC 63 — The Ghost of Cassiopeia
A nebula being destroyed by the star that lights it, 550 light years away
“The same star that makes this nebula visible is the one destroying it.”
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NGC 281 — The Pacman Nebula
A star factory with its own demolition crew, 9,500 light years away
“The most recognizable feature of this nebula is the part where there's nothing.”
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M1 — The Crab Nebula
A supernova the Earth watched happen, in the year 1054
“People wrote this down in 1054, saw it as an omen, and moved on. It was a star dying and a st…”
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M27 — The Dumbbell Nebula
A dying star, 1,360 light years away
“Stars that look like this don't explode. They drift apart.”
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The Eastern Veil — First Light, Seestar S50 Pro
A new telescope opens on familiar wreckage
“First light on new gear is usually a debugging session. This one produced a keeper on night one.”
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NGC 6960 — The Witch's Broom
The Western Veil, with a naked-eye star impaled on it
“This target was recommended, scheduled, and postponed twelve separate times over three weeks.…”
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M42 — The Orion Nebula
The brightest stellar nursery in the sky, lit by four stars
“Nearly everything glowing in this image runs on the output of four stars.”
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M76 — The Little Dumbbell
The faintest object in the Messier catalog
“Messier's catalog was never a list of wonders. It was a list of annoyances — fuzzy things a c…”
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The Moon — Waxing Gibbous
The only world in this journal humans have walked on
“All the texture is at the terminator — the boundary between light and dark. Under full, even…”
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The Sun — White Light, With Sunspots
The only star close enough to have a surface
“This is the same kind of object as everything else on the page — the only difference is dista…”
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NGC 7331 — The Deer Lick Galaxy
The Milky Way's twin, 40 million light years away
“The fleas look like companions. They're not even in the same neighborhood.”
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NGC 7023 — The Iris Nebula
Starlight mirrored by dust, 1,300 light years away
“This object forced a real decision at the telescope: the filter that makes most nebulae possi…”
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Sh2-140 — A Bright Rim on a Dark Cloud
A star eroding a molecular cloud, 2,900 light years away
“Same night, same target, same sky. Ninety-one minutes through the wrong filter lost to fifty-…”
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IC 1396A — The Elephant's Trunk
A dark globule 20 light-years long, 2,400 light years away
“The first night on this target produced nothing, and it looked identical to a good night from…”
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NGC 7293 — The Helix Nebula
The nearest bright planetary nebula — the Sun's future, 650 light years away
“The teal light in this image cannot be made on Earth. Not won't — can't.”
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M33 — The Triangulum Galaxy
The third member of our Local Group, built from two nights of light
“One hour on this galaxy produced a smudge. Two nights, registered and stacked, produced a por…”
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NGC 7000 — Inside the North America Nebula
A frame with no sky in it, 2,600 light years away
“This capture looked like a total failure — a gray, featureless haze. It was actually a direct…”
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IC 1318 — The Butterfly Nebula
Glowing hydrogen split by a river of dust, in the heart of Cygnus
“This image sat in the archive for a month. Nobody knew it was one of the best captures of the…”
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NGC 6979 — Pickering's Triangle
The faintest corner of the Veil, and the woman who actually found it
“The name on the object belongs to the director. The discovery belongs to Williamina Fleming.”
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NGC 7380 — The Wizard Nebula
A young cluster carving its birth cloud, 8,000 light years away
“The telescope shot this through the wrong filter, and it wasn't a malfunction. It was a label.”
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M31 — The Andromeda Galaxy
A trillion stars, and every photon older than our species
“Andromeda is approaching at a quarter-million miles per hour, and the merger is still four an…”
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NGC 6992 — The Eastern Veil Nebula
A supernova shock front, built from two nights of light
“This image is two ordinary nights combined — one 50-minute session, one 100-minute session, a…”
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M15 — Globular Cluster in Pegasus
A hundred thousand ancient stars with a collapsed core
“Processing this image required treating the center and the edge as different problems.”
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M100 — Face-On Spiral in the Virgo Cluster
A near-twin of the Milky Way, 55 million light years away
“Sometimes the answer isn't more time — it's a different place to start from.”
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M101 — The Pinwheel, Revisited
Same target, 11 minutes, a different sky
“The gear was identical. The hands were the same. The only variable was where I was standing.”
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Jupiter — Cloud Bands
The closest gas giant, captured as it actually looks through a small telescope
“It's not a solid thing — it's a fluid in equilibrium with itself.”
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Jupiter and the Galilean Moons
What Galileo saw in January 1610 that changed everything
“Sometimes the small dots are the part of the picture that matters.”
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M101 — The Pinwheel Galaxy
A face-on spiral 70% larger than the Milky Way, 21 million light years away
“The lopsided arms aren't a flaw.”
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M57 — The Ring Nebula
A perfect smoke ring around a dying star, 2,300 light years away
“What looks like a ring is a barrel seen end-on.”
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M92 — The Other Hercules Globular
Among the oldest objects in the universe, 26,700 light years away
“M92 has been there the whole time.”
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M13 — The Hercules Globular Cluster
300,000 stars in a 22,200-light-year ball, older than the Earth
“Everything in this image is older than the planet you're standing on.”
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M104 — The Sombrero Galaxy
An edge-on spiral with a dust lane, 29 million light years away
“Sometimes the shape gives away the structure faster than any amount of detail would.”
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M8 — The Lagoon Nebula
A stellar nursery in Sagittarius, 5,000 light years away
“Where transformation actually happens isn't always pretty up close.”
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M17 — The Omega (Swan) Nebula
A bright emission nebula in Sagittarius, 5,500 light years away
“We don't name what we see, we name what we recognize.”
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M20 — The Trifid Nebula
Three kinds of nebula in one frame, 5,200 light years away
“Three kinds of light coming from the same object at the same time.”
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M88 — Spiral Galaxy in the Virgo Cluster
One of thousands, 47 million light years away
“The Virgo Cluster is the reason any of this matters.”
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M51 — The Whirlpool Galaxy
A merger in progress, 23 million light years away
“Veteran transition is usually framed as “leaving one career to start another.” Two separate t…”
Read entry →Field notes for Seestar owners
Tested on this journal's own data, with the numbers.
- Should You Stack Your Seestar Subs in Siril? What One Measured Night ShowedMeasured on one night of M51: the onboard stack beat a Siril stack of the same subs, and GraXpert AI denoise on the onboard stack beat everything
- How to Shoot a Seestar Mosaic: What 27 Panels Taught MeField rotation, overlap, matching depth, plate solving and blending, from a 19-panel Veil and an 8-panel Heart & Soul on two Seestars
The rig behind these
No observatory, no laptop, no polar alignment — one smart telescope.
ZWO Seestar S50 ~$800
A 50 mm all-in-one smart telescope — optics, mount, camera, and app in one 5-lb body. Point it at a target and it finds, tracks, and stacks on its own. It's the reason a light-polluted backyard can produce the images above — and the whole point of this site: you don't need a mountaintop or a physics degree to start.
Some links here are affiliate links (ZWO and Amazon Associates) — Sitreps may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.
One photo. One lesson.
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