Sergey S. @sergey@social.ssbx.dev

Yay 4th of July is coming, and we are getting an early start as usual. Sorry only pictures with a cellphone.

Learning is always good. There was a day with clear skies, so I've decided to take a shot of a new object on my astrophotography journey. it's IC4592 aka Blue Horse Head Nebula. However I have not done enough research about the fact how dim it is, and that I should not be shooting it from Bortle 8 sky, I've learned that afterwards after spending time to process it. Also my roof was in the way, I had to delete some shots. Shot with Canon T3i, 135mm F/2.8 lens, ISO 100 1 hour total int. #astropic

@sergey Of course I can't resist and not to take some astropics, since sky was clear. Here are few composite shots, MilkyWay rising from behind the house and mountains under the stars. I still have lot's to learn on how to process those. #astropic

@sergey Lastly while in Tucson we've visited Saguaro National Park and learned a lot about cactuses, apparently first flowers appear around age of 30 years and first branch would grow only at 75 years. That's crazy how old those things are.

@sergey Our third stop was in Tucson, AZ. We’ve rented a house with “million dollar view” and apparently advertisement didn’t lie view was really magnificent. You can sit and relax looking at those mountains covered in cactuses. One day we've got an interesting visitor who performed a little dance for us.

@sergey One other place we’ve gone to while in Flagstaff was Walnut Canyon National Monument. Which is very interesting place, apparently before volcano eruption it was a home for people of Sinagua who used natural cliff walls to built houses. Of course I can’t resist to take a picture of blooming cactus.

@sergey Grand Canyon was awesome, magnificent and enormous. Though watch tower is a modern building that “fakes” as one that falling apart. There are a lot of tourists there you can hear almost any language there.

@sergey On our way to Grand Canyon we’ve stopped at Wupatki National Monument and apparently there were some prescribed forest fires, which was quite weird to see.

@sergey Second stop was Flagstaff, AZ. Central spot to lot’s of places we’ve visited. It was a great house in a neighborhood that’s trying to be a pine forest. Sky was amazing, but only thing I can do is startrails. #astropic

@sergey Our first stop was in Albuquerque, NM where we’ve spent day strolling around historical Old Town and museums. Then we’ve gone to Sandia Peak Tramway - longest aerial tram in Americas. Here is view from the top and Albuquerque at the bottom.

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