Rachel's Pages | Astronomy

One of my strongest early memories is seeing the Milky Way for the first time over Lake Superior at a cabin my parents had rented for us. All the lights were out, and there was hardly any light pollution from anywhere else. The Milky Way was clear as could be, and it nearly floored me. What a big, beautiful night sky there is! I've been interested in astronomy ever since.

Looking at the stars can have different effects on people... For some people, it makes them feel small and insignificant, like they are powerless against a cruel universe. For me, though, looking at the stars reminds me of how small my problems are, and how the universe doesn't really deal in "problems" anyway, and how much beauty we can find in the world. Sometimes that beauty is hiding behind annoying cloud cover, but it's always there.

While I was interested in astronomy as a kid, it took a long time to turn into a major hobby. I took astronomy in college, and continued to have an interest in space science and NASA images, but never really had a chance to do much observing myself. I lived in the biggest city in Taiwan for many years, and the light pollution there meant that being able to see even a single star was a lucky occurence. But my interest in astronomy continued, in spite of inability to actually see anything myself. When I came back to the US in 2004, I knew early on that one of the hobbies I wanted to get back into was stargazing.

General Resources

All different kinds of things to help with your observing.

Books

Of course, this is one of the best ways to inform yourself about the universe. Most of the best information about astronomy is on printed pages. Here are some of my favorite observing-related books.

The Backyard Astronomer's Guide: This is a great book. It has excellent information about all kinds of topics: choosing the best eyepiece, what kind of scope to start with, how to set up an equatorial mount, how to do star-hopping (the process of moving from one arrangement of stars to another to find obscure objects), how to keep an observation log, etc. etc. The authors have a very pragmatic approach throughout. For example, when discussing how to set up an equatorial mount, they basically say that they think beginners shouldn't start with GEMs — but since a lot do anyway, they talk about how to get working with one.

They also do a really good job of keeping expectations reasonable and letting you know what kinds of things you can actually expect to see when you're at the eyepiece. A lot of books use professional, long-exposure astrophotos as if they're what you'd see when looking through a moderate-size telescope; this is horribly misleading. What you'll really see when you're looking at most galaxies, nebulae, globular clusters, etc. is some kind of little grey fuzzball. An amazingly beautiful, incredibly distant fuzzball, with ancient photons hitting your eyes after traveling through space for centuries or eons. But still, a fuzzball. It's important to have realistic expectations.

The accompanying website for the book is also pretty great, and it gives a good sample of the kinds of information found in the book.
The Year-Round Messier Marathon: A great book of star charts, dedicated to helping you find your way around the various Messier objects in the sky.

(What are the Messier objects? Charles Messier was an 18th century astronomer who wanted to find comets; he made a list of ~110 celestial objects that are not comets, and this turned out to be a great collection of deep-sky objects such as nebulas, galaxies and clusters for amateur astronomers.)

The book has a good description of how to do star-hopping, and has some quite nice finder charts for all the Messier objects, as well as good background information about each of the objects. Like the Backyard Astronomer's Guide, this book gives very realistic depictions of what the Messier objects will look like through a telescope (and also through a finder scope). It's a handy field reference for the sky, especially if you're sticking to the Messier list.

The book's webpage gives a nice sample finder chart for Orion and a full table of contents.
Turn Left at Orion: Another great beginners' book. Better in some ways than Year-Round; it has some better finder charts, has slightly glossier paper (important when you're considering dew), and doesn't just focus on Messier objects. Instead, it's basically a catalogue of good objects for binoculars and small telescopes. Some of the Messier objects are hard to spot even in a huge telescope, so if you're not trying to work through the Messier list, Turn Left may be a better book to start with. And like the two books mentioned above, it gives nicely realistic depictions of what objects will look like.
College astronomy textbook: If you want the most solid understanding of what you're actually looking at when you see the night sky, get yourself a college astronomy textbook. Up-to-date ones will include all the important concepts, such as how distance is measured in astronomy, how stars are born and die, how galaxies form, how we can wring the maximum possible information from the light cast by an object, what the fate of the universe is, etc. etc.

I'm not going to link to particular textbooks, because a) they keep changing and b) I'm not au courant enough to judge what the best one(s) are these days. Suffice to say, if it's being used in a fair number of college courses, it's probably pretty good.
Magazines about astronomy: There are quite a few magazines about astronomy out there, and some are very good.

Astronomy is probably the one I read most often, because it's the most readily available. The coverage is good, with a nice mix of articles and features. I feel like a lot of it is somewhat fluffy, with a slight preference for style over substance, but that's a minor grumble. I like it and keep reading it.

If I could get it on a regular basis, I might read Sky News as my main astronomy magazine. It's a bit thinner than Astronomy, but that's because it's not as fluffy. (Sky News appears to have nothing to do with the Murdoch-owned news channel. Luckily.)

When I've read it, BBC Sky at Night Magazine (the companion publication for the long-running BBC series) has also been pretty good, with a nice mix of depth and fun.

One magazine I'm going to specifically recommend you not read is Sky & Telescope. The magazine tends to be very in depth, but unfortunately, the publishers engaged in some terrible transphobia a few years ago, and haven't done anything that I can see to make up for it.

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Video & Audio

When you don't have time to take a college class, or clouds prevent going out to observe, there's still a lot of great ways to watch the night sky.

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage: One of my favorite astronomy-related TV series, the original Cosmos is a great place to start if you'd like a good overview of issues in astronomy and science in general. The series explores a huge number of interesting and important issues: What does the universe look like? What is it made of? How do we know what we know? How have misunderstandings led us astray in the past, and how can we watch out for misunderstandings to come?

It's amazing how much detail the series goes into — it touches on topics ranging from comparative linguistics to special relativity. Some of what he says is a little controversial, but it's mostly just incontovertible science. And even though he'd love to have been contradicted by more recent research, Sagan says very little that needs emendation.

No less important is the beauty of the narration. Soter, Druyan and Sagan crafted a superb script that manages to be concise, poetic and truthful.

Find this in a library, or maybe on YouTube — it frequently shows up there. Me, I'm not sure how Sagan felt about internet piracy, or how Soter or Druyan feel, and I like supporting art that I appreciate. I therefore bought my own copy of the DVDs, available from CarlSagan.com.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey: A mostly worthy companion to Sagan's original series. It adds a lot of great detail to things the original series couldn't say much about, like the composition of the seas on Titan or current theories on multiverses. And Neil deGrasse Tyson does a great job of capturing the wonder and gravitas that Sagan conveyed in the original series. There are some slightly annoying politics implicit in the series that I won't go into here, but mostly, I like the new series a lot.
Deep Sky Videos: This series, part of the Nottingham Science channel's many, many subchannels, explores a lot of different aspects of astronomy: how telescopes work, what globular clusters are, how observing time is allocated at major observatories, etc. etc.
Forrest Tanaka: He's a friendly photographer, and he has some very nice videos about astrophotography on his YouTube channel. He gives a lot of important details and his videos have quite high production values.
Star Gazers: This is the modern incarnation of the Jack Horkheimer weekly astronomy TV show. They give lots of interesting tips: what's going on in the sky, how to do basic observing, where constellations come from, etc. etc. It's pretty rewarding, regardless of your level of experience.

Their website has the latest videos, as well as listings of where to catch the show on TV.
Astronomy Cast: This podcast from Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain deals with all sorts of topics related to astronomy: famous scientists, the latest on exoplanets, how to do astrophotography, etc. etc. Check their extensive archive for past shows.

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Online references

Lots of different sites to help you know when or what to observe.

Clear Sky Charts

Attilla Danko's Clear Sky Charts use weather data from the Canadian Meteorological Center to predict observing conditions in a huge number of places across North America. The site gives hourly estimates of cloud cover, humidity, seeing, etc. -- superbly useful for astromical observing.

Charts for Minnesota: Here's a list of all the Clear Sky Charts for Minnesota. The main Clear Sky Chart website has all sorts of links, including contact information if you'd like to request a chart for your own favored observing location.

See also the Quick Reference section of this page for live versions of the Clear Sky charts for three of my favorite sites.

Where are dark-sky sites?

Where near you can you see the Milky Way easily at night? If you live in a light-polluted place like me, the answer may be "very far away indeed". Unfortunately, the world is becoming more light polluted.

Of course, we shouldn't let light pollution stop us from observing. I've been able to see some incredibly faint objects within a mile or so of downtown Minneapolis. But it's nice to know where the dark skies are near you, and it's good to keep working to preserve the dark skies we have.

Jonathan Tomshine's Dark Sky Finder is a nice overlay for Google maps that shows how bad the light pollution is for various locations in North America. Very handy for finding sites that are not light polluted, or at least less light polluted.
The International Dark-Sky Association fights to keep dark skies available. They provide maps of dark sky locations for the whole world, and give advice on the kinds of lighting we should be pushing for and using.
The World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness gives good detail about dark skies for the whole world.
If you're in Minnesota, definitely check out the Minnesota Astronomical Society. They have some good observatories in pretty dark places; their Cherry Grove site is in a nice dark location south of the Twin Cities, and their Long Lake Conservation Center is even darker.

If you're not in Minnesota, find the astronomy club nearest you. They may well have some great observatories that you can avail yourself of. See Local Astronomy Groups, below.

SEDS

The Students for the Exploration and Development of Space have a very extensive website, with lots of different information and projects.

Their Messier database, in particular, is very handy, with tons of information about all 110 Messier objects. They also link to a lot of different observations of the objects, so you can see what (for example) the Pleiades look like through a 6" telescope versus through a 20" heavy-duty astrograph. SEDS' database has numerous ways to access the data; I find their icon sheet, which shows thumbnails of all the objects, very handy and beautiful.

Heavens Above

This website provides all sorts of observing resources, including where various satellites are (including the ISS), current sky charts from any location at any time (print your own dedicated planisphere!), and all sorts of current information about the Moon.

Your Sky

This website provides a virtual sky, virtual horizon and virtual telescope, giving simulated views for any location or date on Earth. Set your latitude, longitude and time, and you get a very nice window on the night sky. The graphics are a little primitive, but almost as good as Xephem, and the website is very fast.

Sites for star charts

It's always nice to know what you're looking at when you go out observing, whether it's naked-eye or using expensive equipment.

Planispheres

A good place to start is with a planisphere, one of those rotating discs that shows what the sky above will look like. You can buy them, of course; and larger ones will both show more and be more readable in the field.

But there are also websites where you print and craft your own planisphere. Here is an example from the Ventura County Astronomical Society.

Star atlases

If you do a lot of observing, and especially if you start using bigger equipment, you'll probably want to get a deeper guide. Books such as Messier Marathon or Turn Left at Orion give some very nice charts for binoculars or smaller telescopes.

If you eventually exhaust those resources, you may want a star atlas that goes even deeper. And there are some remarkably wonderful atlases online, completely free. (Of course, printing them out and perhaps getting them laminated and bound wouldn't be free, but still, they're very nice resources. And you could possibly put them on a computer for field use.)

Taki's 8.5 Magnitude Star Atlas: Toshimi Taki has developed charts for the whole sky down to magnitude 8.5, which is very useful for dark-site binocular observing or telescope observing from the city. Check Taki's website for downloads.
TriAtlas: This amazing project covers the entire sky in three levels of huge detail: magnitude 9, 11 and 13. (For comparison, I have trouble detecting magnitude 13 objects in my 6" telescope at a pretty dark site. So this atlas is very comprehensive.) The TriAtlas website gives the full catalog and download links.

Astrometry.net

After a night of astrophotography, it can sometimes be hard to remember what all those frames show. Especially when you take a very long exposure, you might see objects that you didn't even know were in the field. How do you identify what you're looking at?

You could of course look at a star atlas and compare by hand. But this can be automated, and has been. On Astrometry.net, you can upload image files and the server there will automatically identify what's in the field. It doesn't always succeed — sometimes the source isn't clear enough to resolve where in the sky the field is — but it usually works, and brilliantly.

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Sharing

If you want to share you enjoyment of the night sky with others, there are lots of ways to do it.

Online hangouts

There are lots of ways to virtually socialize with fellow stargazers.

Cloudy Nights: The forums on this site are generally very friendly and informative. There are also some nice classified ads, and some very active galleries as well.
Mu-43: This website is for users of micro 4/3 cameras, which allow interchangeable lenses on a small camera body. The forums there are quite friendly, and the astrophotography section has some nice images and discussions.
Ice in Space: This is an extensive astronomy forum focused on Australia and New Zealand.

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Local astronomy groups

It can be good to hang out with people face-to-face in an astronomy club. Going to a star party where people have all their various scopes set up can be a lot of fun. You can chat about what you're viewing, what kinds of equipment you've got, and just have someone to share your enjoyment of the night sky with. Many groups will organize special events such as Messier Marathons (where participants try to view all 110 Messier objects in a single night), public talks and shows, and weekend-long star parties where you can camp with fellow stargazers.

Joining a group can also be useful in terms of equipment. A lot of groups will have dedicated astronomy setups that you can borrow or have access to if you're a member, and sometimes the observing fields themselves are open only to members. And it's always nice to be able to see through someone's telescope and ask how they like it before you decide on buying one yourself.

There are a lot of astronomy groups out there. Here are some resources.

Minnesota Astronomical Society: The main astronomy group near me. They have a bunch of different observatories, with a lot of very nice equipment. Mostly, I'm just interested in having a place where I can go and do stargazing far from city lights. They also have regular star parties, public viewing events, talks, SIG meetings, etc. etc.

Their website has tons of great links for all the neat things they do.
Astronomical League: There are astronomy groups large and small all over the world. This is a meta-group of astronomy clubs all around the US. They have a yearly convention, publish a pretty nice quarterly magazine and generally help people network.

See their listing of Minnesota groups, or their main website.
JPL Night Sky Network: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a different catalogue of amateur astronomy groups. Their interface is primarily geared towards helping you find clubs nearby, if you live in the US.
Royal Astronomical Society of Canada: If you live in Canada, the RASC seems to be a pretty good place to look for local astronomy clubs. Or, really, Centres; they appear to have a pretty formalized process and support structure.
Astronomy Clubs at Sky News: Being a Canadian magazine, Sky News has a very nice listing of local astronomy clubs, not all of which have crown affiliation.
IAU Directory: The International Astronomical Union has a very nice directory of astronomy groups, both professional and amateur, from across the world. (They don't list everything, though; I know they don't have the Astronomical Society of the Republic of China (Taiwan), for example.)
Wikipedia's list of astronomical societies: I haven't checked to see if there's anything here that's not duplicated on the IAU website, but this list is at least a good alternate source of club information. And let me know if you find better ones!

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Image galleries

Astrophotography is a way of storing photons for a rainy day. Here are some galleries of astro images to check out.

Government galleries

The US government does a lot of science and outreach, which includes publishing and publicizing many, many beautiful astronomical images.

Hubble Site: The Hubble gallery gives a great array of incredibly gorgeous images from our most famous orbiting telescope. Almost all are public domain, and most are available at very high resolution.
National Optical Astronomy Observatory: The NOAO provides telescope time at US-funded ground-based telescopes. They have a very nice image gallery.
Astronomy Picture of the Day: Go check out the APOD archive site. Some of the images are public domain, some are copyright; but almost all are jaw-droppingly beautiful, and it's updated every day.

Image respositories

There are a lot of websites out there that function solely as places for people to store their photos. Some of these specialize in astronomy-related images; others are just useful for astrophotos.

Astrobin is a relatively new image repository (read: amazing photo gallery) where lots and lots of amateur astrophotographers have put their work. It is pretty astounding, with thousands and thousands of superb images, updated on a constant basis. It also has a very nice search function, so you can (for example) look for all images of M13, or all images taken with a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer mount.
Flickr and various other public image respositories are also great places to look for astrophotography. Search for 'astrophoto' on Flickr and see what you get.

Personal galleries

A lot of people have their own websites for their images. There are a vast number of these out there. Here are some of my favorites.

Panther Observatory: The website for Johannes Schedler's astrophotography. He has some really beautiful images of deep sky objects; I love his sense of aesthetics.
Geckzilla.com: Judy Schmidt uses public domain data (from the Hubble and other sources) to create some really lovely astro images. (Yes, you can do some pretty amazing astroimaging even if you don't own a telescope. And given the free processing tools out there, it's possible to do it without buying anything other than a computer.)
Weather and Sky Photography: Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn has another great gallery of images, both terrestrial and celestial.
Catching the Light: Jerry Lodriguss' astrophotography site has a very nice gallery, as well as some very nice tutorials on how to do digital astrophotography.
Mine: Some of my own astrophotos are available in their own section of this page.

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Apps & programs

Naturally enough, there are lots of applications and computer programs that are handy to use in astronomy. Here are some I have experience with.

Linux and open source apps

These all run natively on Linux, and most work on OS X and Windows as well.

XEphem: This program uses a non-standard GUI with lots of annoyances (hard-to-read fonts not least of all). But it gives a lot of good information for many different kinds of objects.

Check it out on the XEphem website.
Stellarium: This isn't really an observing program; it's more of a planetarium program. Thus, it's not especially useful for finding out more information about objects, making observing lists, etc., but it's great if you want to get a sense of what the night sky looks like naked eye.

See the Stellarium website.
Celestia: This is, again, not really an observing program. Instead, it's a spaceflight simulator that uses a lot of real data to generate very realistic views of our solar system and the universe at large. Not all the data is scientifically accurate, however, and it's not the kind of thing you'd want to use to set up a night's star-gazing schedule.

The Celestia website, like the program, hasn't been updated in a while.
KStars: The main KDE astronomy program. This has very nice datasets, with moderate amounts of information about huge numbers of astronomical objects. It scrolls and zooms easily, which is a nice feature; but the magnitude limit is hard to change dynamically, meaning you can have way too many or way too few stars visible in a given field. It has some nice observing list tools, though.

Check out the KStars website.
Carte du Ciel: This is my main desktop astronomy app. CdC (also called Skychart, which is what the name means in French) also uses a slightly non-standard GUI that requires a lot of fiddling to make night-vision friendly, but it's pretty good. Scrolling is slow, and getting to the "more information about an object" page takes too much clicking. But when you get there, the information is quite good. It makes it quite easy to set magnitude limits for both stars and deep-sky objects. I also generally like the input scheme, with mouse buttons and keystrokes doing what I want them to. And it's available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Here is the English Carte du Ciel website.

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Other free programs

Apps that aren't open source, but don't cost money.

Google Sky: One of several apps designed to be used on a mobile device while viewing the night sky, this can give you a good general sense of what you're looking at when you're looking at the night sky.

The interface is simple almost in the extreme. For Messier objects, as an example, it gives only their number and location in the sky, no further information. It doesn't tell you which direction you're pointing, or show many stars, or give any indication what color they are. It also has some kind of smooth scrolling feature that means it's hard to actually point where you want to point.

Find it in the app store of a mobile device; Google don't provide an easy way to link to webpages for the program.
SkEye: Probably my pick for best free Android observing app. SkEye has all the features of Google Sky, but gives a lot more information: it shows how big the current FOV is, it indicates star color, it shows a lot more objects, etc.

Most important for my purposes, it gives a brief but useful description of what each object is. For example, for M51, it says Galaxy SBr: 12.81 Size 11' x 6.9', so you know that M51 is a galaxy with a size of 11 by 6.9 arc seconds. I'm not sure what SBr: 12.81 means — perhaps Surface Brightness? This doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. Still, vastly more information than Google Sky gives.

I don't really like navigating on either SkEye or Google Sky; they seem very fiddly, changing orientation all too easily or hiccuping when moving in or out. But they're very nice for free apps.

Check out the main SkEye website, or find it in an app store.
ScreenDim is a very, very handy app that does just one thing: it dims the screen on my Android tablet to a point where it won't blow out my night vision. This is very important, because I've started using my tablet as my main star chart/observing list tool.

In actuality, if I'm in a truly dark place and want to preserve my dark adaptation, I use ScreenDim in combination with a red plastic overlay for the screen to make sure.

To check out ScreenDim, see the publisher's website or just search in a mobile device app store.
Space Engine is a very pretty program that allows you to fly through most of the observable universe and see planets, stars, clusters, etc. etc. It isn't at all intended as hard science; in fact, once you get beyond the solar system, a large part of it is completely fictional. (The program procedurally generates things outside of the real-world data provided.) But still, it is a lot of fun.

The Space Engine website has downloads, a manual and lots of pretty screenshots.

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Non-free programs

Sky Safari: This app, originally for the iPad but also ported to Android, is pretty much indispensable for me now. When I started wanting to observe NGC objects not listed in Turn Left at Orion or Year-Round Messier Marathon, I was pondering what to do next: print off one of the TriAtlases? Buy an old deep-magnitude atlas pre-printed? Look for some kind of app? But all the Linux apps were, well, okay, just not great.

I got a chance to try Sky Safari on a friend's iPad, and it almost instantly sold me on the app. The ability to pinch-zoom and dynamically set magnitude limits means I can almost perfectly replicate what I'm seeing in the eyepiece, or in the camera finder. Plus, it has tons of interesting information available for every single object, including multi-paragraph writeups for most of the brighter objects. It does very useful observing lists, and allows detailed note-taking for observations, too. You can even set a panoramic image so that the horizon actually looks like your observing location. It has dozens of other features that are either impresssive or just plain useful.

At least, it has all those features in the full version. I don't really know what features the cheaper versions have, because after using it for a night of observing, I was sold. I bought the full version right away. In fact, not only did it sell me on the app itself, it sold me on the whole concept of tablets. I bought my tablet because of Sky Safari — it is truly a killer app for the platform.

It is a little difficult to know exactly where to link for Sky Safari. The current publisher, as of this writing, is Simulation Curriculum; but their website doesn't make it easy to link to their Sky Safari pages. Sky Safari has its own website, but it seems out of date and unsupported in some ways.

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Astrophotography apps

As I've started to get into astrohotography, I've learned how much it is truly an art. There are many decisions to make at every stage of the process: Allow these details here at the expense of noise over there? More red or more blue? More or less contrast? What comes out of the camera at the end of a night is by no means ready to display; it takes a lot of care to create something even halfway worth looking at.

I'm becoming more acquainted with ways to process my images in Linux. So far, my budget for astrophotography programs has been precisely $0, so everything I use is available free of charge (though not necessarily open source). Here are some of the apps I use when coaxing and crafting my astro images.

Deep Sky Stacker: This is a pretty essential app. It takes a series of images of the same object and automatically aligns and combines them to produce a better, less noisy image. DSS is Windows-native, but runs just fine under WINE.

See the main Deep Sky Stacker website for downloads, moderately useful tutorials, etc.
RawTherapee: This program is designed for working with RAW camera files; it's basically an open source alternative to Adboe Lightroom. It doesn't have all the features of its more expensive cousins, and is somewhat slow, but it works quite well for my purposes. It's also Linux-native.

For my workflow, I sometimes use RawTherapee twice: first, to check the exposures I've taken over the course of the night and make sure they're ready for stacking; then again later on, to process the TIFF that Deep Sky Stacker outputs.

Check out the main Raw Therapee website. It has tons of different documentation, downloads, screenshots, etc. etc. etc.
GIMP: The Gnu Image Manipulation Program is what I use once I've got a TIFF I'm happy with from RawTherapee. I often do additional cleanup in GIMP, adjust the light curves more, sometimes stack multiple images, etc. And the final cropping and PNG output is always with GIMP.

And of course GIMP is also a full-featured image editor. It does almost everything that Photoshop can do at one zero-th the cost. Well worth checking out even if you don't use it for astrophotography.

The main GIMP webpage has a bunch of resources, including downloads, tutorials and many plugins. See also Georg Hennig's Gimp Astronomy Plugins page for some useful astrophoto add-ons.

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My images

As soon as I realized that my crappy, low-res digital camera could do long-exposure shots, I've been doing astrophotography. Recently, I've managed to get a slightly better camera, some acceptable lenses and a pretty decent astrophotography mount. Here are some of my results.

Click on the thumbnail to get to the full-size image.

6 Comae Berenices and Friends	The star 6 Comae Berenices appears very close to a large swath of the Virgo Cluster, a huge grouping of galaxies about 60 million light years away. We are actually in the far outer reaches of the Virgo Cluster. The full image shows lots and lots of galaxies; my maximum resolution image has probably hundreds.
6 Comae Berenices and Friends, annotated	The same image as above, run through Astrometry.net to identify what all those little fuzzballs are.
NGC4565 and Coma Berenices	The lovely edge-on galaxy NGC4565 with the nearby Coma Berenices cluster. Not great seeing, and also not a lot of imaging time, so the galaxy has very little detail; but it's plainly edge-on, and there are hints of the dust lanes along the edge. NGC4494 is also visible.
Jupiter, Leo and Coma Berenices	A wide-field view of Jupiter, Leo and Coma Berenices. Not great seeing, but decent enough polar alignment. The fuzzy cluster in the upper left is Coma Berenices; the actual open cluster is called Melotte 111.
Jupiter, three Galileans and Sigma Leonis	I managed to get pretty good polar alignment the night of 2016 March 12, which allowed me to take this fairly decent image of Jupiter. (Decent considering that I wasn't using a telescope, just a fairly long lens.) The three dots near the planet are (from left to right) Callisto, Ganymede and Europa; Io is lost in the glare of the planet itself. The bright-ish star on the left is Sigma Leonis.
M104	An attempt at getting the so-called Sombrero Galaxy from the city. No color, and only the barest hints of the dust lanes, but still it shows the disc shape well.
M51	The famous Whirlpool Galaxy in Ursa Major, this has a nice satellite galaxy. My image starts to reveal some of the color differences between the two objects.
M81 group	M81, M82, NGC 3077 and NGC 2976 all show nicely here.
M13 rising wide-field	A wide-field shot of M13 rising. Almost all of Hercules is visible, along with Vega and Lyra on the left. The glow along the horizon is mostly the Milky Way.
M13	The prettiest globular cluster visible from the Northern Hemisphere, this is one of my favorite observing targets. My attempts to photograph it have so far not had especially great seeing, but I keep working on it. My combined image shows NGC 6207 well.
Deeper M13	A slightly deeper image of M13. This shows more faint stars, and gives more definite detail in NGC 6207.
M13 from the city	This shot of M13 from the city isn't as deep or as good as previous shots, largely because I took this from the very light-polluted skies of suburban Taibei. Managed to get some good color here.
Sagittarius wide-field	A nice view of the Sagittarius region of our galaxy, which includes the core of the Milky Wy. This image also includes the nova that appeared in Sagittarius in March 2015, as well as a bunch of deep sky objects such as the Trifid Nebula and Lagoon Nebula.
Milky Way in Scutum and Sagittarius	A stacked view of the central Milky Way, setting over Lake Superior.
Milky Way in Scutum and Sagittarius, annotated	The same image as above, with a few favorite targets noted.
Milky Way in Sagittarius, from the city	This is not a particularly great shot, except when you consider that I took it from the southern suburbs of Taipei. Lots of subs, stacked, with a lot of processing.
M22	The biggest globular visible cluster in Sagittarius, this came through surprisingly clear from my rooftop — even more surprising considering the huge amount of light pollution and the nearly-full Moon when I took this. NGC 6642, another globular cluster, sits in the upper right corner of the photo.
M8 and M20	M20, the Trifid Nebula, and M8, the Lagoon Nebula, are located in Sagittarius, visually near the core of the Milky Way. My image shows both; M8 is higher up, and M20 is bigger.
M7	A pretty nice open cluster, sometimes called "Ptolemy's Cluster", in Sagittarius.
Scorpius rising	An attempt at salvaging a cloudy night. This shows the brighter stars of Scorpius rising in the southeast. The bright red star is Antares; the bright white-bluish object is Saturn.
Central Sagitta and M71	The globular cluster M71 sits nicely near the core of the constellation Sagitta, the Arrow.
Train and Delphinus	A train streaks past, as Delphinus sets in the west.
Summer Triangle and Milky Way	The Summer Triangle is the stars Vega, Deneb and Altair, which are high in northern summer months. This wide-field shows NGC 7000 (the North America Nebula) and lots of other detail.
M27 from the city	M27, the 'Dumbbell Nebula', is really quite bright, but it took a lot of stacking and tweaking to get anything decent under light polluted skies.
M15 from the city	M15, a globular cluster in Pegasus.
Orion, the Pleiades and Comet Lovejoy	I took this from the city, so the light pollution is pretty bad. Nonetheless, it shows the color variations in the various stars, with the red giants nicely orangey, and it even gives a slight hint of the greenish cast of Comet Lovejoy.
Orion, the Pleiades and Comet Lovejoy, annotated	The same image as the above, with all the major objects labeled.
Downtown Minneapolis and the Moon over Lake Calhoun	This is actually a panorama of several images to get the whole scene in. The star at top center is Capella; the one at right center, to the right of the Moon, is Betelgeuse.
Setting winter constellations	More or less the same field as above, though from a dark-sky site. This shows Orion, Taurus and part of Perseus setting in the west. The image includes Aldebaran and the Hyades, M45 (the Pleiades), and M42/43 (the Orion Nebula). Comet Lovejoy had moved on by this point.
M42 & M43	The famous Orion Nebula. M42 is the bigger, palm frond-shaped section; M43 is the smaller blobule at the base. NGC 1973, NGC 1975 & NGC 1977, three related nebulae, are in the upper third of my image.
Alnitak and the Flame Nebula	Alnitak is the star that appears furthest "left" in Orion's Belt, at least from the northern hemisphere. NGC 2024, the Flame Nebula, is visible nearby it. The famous Horsehead Nebula, IC 434, is also barely detectable in this image.
M33	The Triangulum Galaxy. This is very faint, not only because the galaxy itself it faint, but also because the image only includes about 240s of imaging.
Better M33	A better image of M33. This combines about 30 minutes of exposures.
M74	A very nice face-on spiral in Pisces. This image shows only a little detail.
M31 and Winter Milky Way	The winter Milky Way is hard to photograph: it's not nearly as dense or contrasty as the parts that are visible in summer. This is an attempt at bringing out some of the Milky Way visible through Cassiopeia, Perseus and Cepheus. It also features a bunch of deep-sky objects: the Double Cluster; M31, the Andromeda Galaxy; M33, the Triangulum Galaxy; and others.
M31 and Winter Milky Way, annotated	The same image as above, with annotations by me.
M31, the Andromeda Galaxy	The whole galaxy, including its satellites M32 and M110. I think this also shows some of the globular clusters in those galaxies — neat!
Melotte 20 and Mirfak	The bright star Mirfak, in Perseus, surrounded by the open cluster Melotte 20.
Auriga and M45	Auriga and the Pleiades through a gap in the clouds.
Open clusters in Auriga	The Messier open clusters in Auriga. From left to right, they're M37, M36 (the Pinwheel Cluster) and M38 (the Starfish Cluster). The star in the upper left is Theta Aurigae.
M45	A fairly noisy shot of the Pleiades, this nonetheless shows all the main stars with some good color and clarity.
Clearer Pleiades	A better image of the Pleiades.
Sirius and M41	A fairly wide-field shot showing both the open cluster M41 and Sirius.
Sirius against the Milky Way	A better shot of Sirius, showing the star against the Milky Way. And also M41, at the bottom of the frame.
Open clusters M46 and M47	These two open clusters are in the pretty-far-south constellation of Puppis. M46 is the more densely-packed one.
Jupiter	An attempt at getting a decent image through my telescope, which is not on a motorized mount. The bands are clearly visible, as are some of the Galilean moons.
Jupiter and M44	Another attempt at salvaging a pretty cloudy night; I got a shot of Jupiter as it was very close to M44, the Beehive Cluster, separated by a band of clouds. All four of the Galilean satellites are visible next to Jupiter.
The Moon	This is a panorama of images made through my 6" Skyquest telescope — an experiment in digiscoping. The flare off to the right is an artifact of the panorama process.
Moon and Clouds	Dramatic clouds rising along with the Moon, following Orion and Gemini.
Northern Lights 1	The night of 16 August 2015 had some lovely aurorae.
Northern Lights 2	More shots of the August 16 aurorae. Note the red spike towards the middle; the coloration wasn't obvious naked eye, but its appearance as a glowing column pointing to the zenith was very clear.
Aurora Borealis and Alkaid	The aurorae of 2015 Nov. 2-3 were dim here, but they showed off the stars nicely.