Latest entry
M45 — The Pleiades
Seven sisters wrapped in a dust cloud that was never theirs
Read entry →SITREPS ASTRONOMY
A Field Journal Of The Night Sky.
Deep space, shot from a backyard in Lakeway, Texas with a $500 telescope. Every glowing point below is an object I photographed — mapped where it rides the sky, each paired with a lesson.
35 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.
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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 →One photo. One lesson.
New entries land when the sky cooperates. Get them by email — no schedule, no spam, just what the telescope caught and what it taught.