I am the first to admit that I kinda suck at astrophotography. I just really struggle making things work and look the way I want and tonight wasn’t really any different.

My chosen location didn’t provide for any unique compositions and without going crazy in Photoshop (which I refuse to do), things pretty much looked like bright lights in the sky. Haha!

Having said that, it was pretty neat. I captured Jupiter and three of its moons and was able to get Saturn and its rings. At least that is somewhat different and something I haven’t done before.

Clear skies and getting away from city lights allowed me to get out and shoot the stars this past Monday. It was, as always, amazing to me to see how many points of light are above when conditions are right – it is breathtaking.

Here, thanks to a long exposure, you can see the center of our galaxy. The bright ‘star’ you see is actually Saturn and toward the left edge of the image you can see two, faint meteors streaking side by side

I visited this awesome Colorado park this past weekend for the first time since I was probably only thigh-high to an adult. It was a great visit getting away from the city and signifies the start of my camping season in earnest.

One of my big goals for the weekend was Milky Way photography. Well, Mother Nature had other plans. I set my alarm, crawled out of the warm comfort of my sleeping bag at 3:00am, emerged to 38 degrees and… Clouds! Being a sailor, you can imagine I used a few “colorful metaphors.” 😀

Nevertheless, I was awake so figured I might as well snap some pics. In between the cirrus clouds you could get a hint of the brilliant display of stars that you can see once you get away from population and lights.

I didn’t get the images I wanted but I did appreciate the quiet and solitude standing on the shoreline of the lake without another person in sight.

Today, NASA successfully landed its InSight probe on the red planet. That made me recall all the times this past summer when I was doing astrophotography and staring up at the Milky Way and a very bright, red ‘star’ – Mars.

Seen here in this image taken back in September, you can see InSight’s new home toward the bottom left corner. Of course from the probe’s point of view, we are little more than a bright blue dot in the sky. Kind of cool to think about.

From last weekend’s trip to the Colorado high country. Taken on Friday night, I was pretty beat after working and driving but made myself leave the warm bed at camp and go out and capture a few images of the show after dark. Certainly, ideally, I would have gone far later at night but as is, the images didn’t come out too bad.

Here, you clearly see the center of our galaxy and as an added bonus, Mars (bright red, bottom left). Just below Mars, the lights from a plane is seen and if you look close toward the top right you see the faint light trail of a satellite.