iSleepy Dark T-Shirt - CafePress

iSleepy Dark T-Shirt - CafePress

Time-lapse video of Texas Star Party 2010

I shot this time-lapse video of my imaging platform tracking several Milky Way objects:

Texas Star Party 2010 from Phillip Jones on Vimeo.

Texas Star Party 2010

Had a great time. My buddy Andy captured video of the Milky Way (and some clouds) crossing over the observing field.

TSP 2010 Time-Lapse from txcheng on Vimeo.

M33 reprocessed

The above image is a reprocessed version of the image below. In a little over 2 years, image processing skills have changed. Hopefully for the better. This M33 image consists of 86 Lum, 60 Blue, 40 Green, 30 Red, and 30 H-alpha. Lots of data there, but in my first processing run 2 years ago, I didn't know how to extract the data from its hiding place.

Today's solar prominence

Captured this today via my little Coronado PST. Dramatic prominence display. Looked great in the eyepiece.

Rho Ophichus photo Explored on Flickr today

On Front Page!

Woot!! Unbeknownst to me, another one of my images had been explored: NGC 253, but it was so low ranked that it didn't generate enough interest to make the front page.

Solar Imaging with Coronado PST

Using my Coronado PST with the Lumenera 2-1M camera on a Tak Teegul mount for capturing the sun. Am impressed more with the visual performance than I am the imaging performance. This will keep me content...for a while. =)

The above solar image was captured on March 28, 2010 with this setup.

Coronado PST double-stacked has arrived

Found this double-stacked Coronado PST on eBay offered as a new item from Highpoint Scientific. It was out there at an unreal price, so I ordered it for solar imaging. First light today with a TeleVue 24mm Panoptic eyepiece blew me away. Without the additional etalon, it looked good. When I threaded the double-stack filter on, the visual contrast and the ability to tune for solar flares was quite wonderful. Very happy with the purchase just from a visual perspective. Of course, it is going to rain tomorrow, so I won't get to try imaging with it just yet.

Frisco StarFest

Weather will be clear tonight. If you live in the Dallas area, join us this evening for our public observing event called Frisco StarFest. The event is located at Frisco Commons Park on McKinney Avenue in Frisco, TX.

Crescent Nebula


Would've posted this earlier, but wanted to shoot the OIII layer to pick up some of the reflection nebula surrounding the Crescent. I'll try again next Fall. For a larger version of this image, click here.

This is an HaLRGB image. I used my Apogee U16M camera with Astrodon Gen2 LRGB and 5nm Ha filters all attached to an Astro-Physics 160 telescope on my Takahashi NJP Temma 2 mount.

Hobby-Eberly Telescope dome at McDonald Observatory in HDR. This is my first HDR image. I shot 3 bracketed images of this last year because I wanted to learn how to do HDR processing. Completely forgot about 'em until last night when I stumbled up on them. I found this HDR Tutorial for PhotoShop CS3 on YouTube:

Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 manual focus lens for Canon EOS cameras

Yes, such a lens does exist. FedEx will be delivering one to me shortly. The plan is to use this with my modified Canon 350D and sell off my Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens. My hope is to obtain even sharper widefield astrophotos.