Sergey S. @sergey@social.ssbx.dev

It’s summer time, typically for our family it’s time to explore something. We recently returned from a roadtrip across multiple states, in particular New Mexico and Arizona, with Grand Canyon being our main target of the trip. However we found lot’s of other interesting places along the way.

How would you call that? Luck? Selling stocks that would fall next day and buying stocks which would rise. Such behavior has all hallmarks of insider trading. By definition: "Insider trading is the buying or selling of a publicly traded company's stock by someone who has non-public, material information about that stock. ". Think for yourself. https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-sold-first-republic-stock-bought-jp-morgan-before-collapse-1797676

I know it's old news, but c'mon you work hard you being very diligent with your money and at the end of the day you'd have to pay highest fees?https://nypost.com/2023/04/16/how-the-us-is-subsidizing-high-risk-homebuyers-at-the-cost-of-those-with-good-credit/

Quick and lazy run down on M101, just because of all of these clouds I could not shoot anything in April, unfortunately it was 80% of the moon, not a good thing to do in a very light polluted place. But I wanted to test my new tactics so bad that I decided to do it anyway against all the odds. Here is what I've got The Pinwheel Galaxy aka M101 shot with Cannon T3i, with 135mm lens at F/2.8 and ISO 100. 1 hour of total integration time #astropic

@sergey Then upon recommendation I've tried different approach. Forget about read noise from your camera, go after more photons. As long as you are able to overcome read noise with more data you are fine. So I've tested with ISO 100 and set lens to F/2.8 and was able to put 1min and 30sec of exposure in my Bortle 7-8 sky. Results are very different, less noise, more vibrant colors. This is pic of srar trails from Ursa Major, just 15 min of integration with just bias as callibration. [2/2]

I think I finally found my trick to a better #astrophotography from my backyard. I am newbie so I've been learning a lot. Based on common knowledge you check where your camera has smallest value of a read noise and then use that ISO, which for me resulted in stopping down my F/2 to F/4 and still decreasing ISO to 800 from 1600 which i thought was optimal value, and taking only 20-25sec exposures to keep histogram just a bit above it's optimal place. Pictures were noisy, colors were mute. [1/2]

It's galaxy season, so I had to do a shot of bunch of galaxies. M87 aka Virgo Galaxy with surrounded galaxies, there are a lot of them in this shot, so I won't name each one. Shot with Canon EOS T3i, 135mm lens at F/4 and ISO 800, total integration time around 1 hour and 20 min. #astropic

Finally clear night in a while, didn't waste a moment. Technically I wasted some time trying to get it into a frame, but it's a different story. Anyway here is M81 Bode's Galaxy, M82 Cigar Galaxy, Garland Galaxy and NGC 2976. Just one hour of integration with a really quick stacking. M81 and M82 shot with Canon T3i, 135mm at F/4 and ISO 800. Total integration time bit less than an hour. #astropic

Earlier this month we had a moment when cloud went away and you can see Jupiter and Venus really close together. Unfortunately I didn't have time to setup my gear as it was a very short lived event, so I took a photo with my phone. #astropic

That session taught how much light pollution kills astrophotography. Try navigating star-field without seeing any stars in DSLR preview, basically you make adjustments to where you think your target is, then take a test shot, rinse and repeat. Then once you are done you trying to plate-solve it to confirm that you got framing right and at that time you see like your target is already behind some object nearby. Yeah I know people designed go to mounts and so on, but manual stuff is so much fun.

I managed to shoot 2 targets(actually way more than 2) last night, problem is that not the one I planned. Here are M44 aka Beehive Cluster on one image and M46 and M47 along with Collinder 155 and Collinder 156 on another. Shot with Canon EOS T3i, 135mm lens at F/4 and ISO 800. Total integration for M44 is about 40 min, M47 is about 10 min. #astropic

There was glimpse of clear sky yesterday and I've decided to spend some time, taking 3 subjects in one shot: Monkey Head Nebula (NGC 2174), Jelly Fish Nebula (IC 443) and M35 star cluster from my Bortle 8. They form a triangle on this picture. This is first rough draft shot with Canon T3i, 135mm, 50 min total integration. #astropic

It's hard to appreciate the beauty of a place until you get there, Grand Turk is amazing and I can confirm that, we were there last week. I have tested my phone under water, in an enclosure of course.

Given all the talks about balloons and other unknown objects being shoot down over US air space, here is something I've spotted back in September past year. What that is? I've dismissed it as balloon carried out by wind, however it hovered for a while in one spot and disappeared quite fast, so I have no idea what it was.

It's been a n interesting challenge to hunt C/2023 E3 ZTF comet, especially with the weather here lately. This was my first attempt to shoot and process comet and to make matters worse it was quite rainy on days when it was closest. First day I miscalculated position completely and missed it, second day I was closer catching it on the edge on my frame, third day was a charm perfectly centered as it was aligned with Capella. Shot with Canon EOS T3i, 135mm, F4 , 83min(int. time). #astropic

I was fascinated by an astronomy back in my the high school-ish years, I recall my excitement when Hale-Bopp comet visited us, fast forward several decades and 6 month ago I revived all of these long forgotten knowledge into my new hobby astrophotography and now chasing another comet.