Back to blogging after a brief hiatus

 Hey, I'm back.

I obviously haven't been doing a good job of keeping the old blog active, but I'm hoping to change that in the days and weeks ahead.

As my last post indicated, Milky Way season is back on us. I made one short trip to Brown County State Park about an hour south of where I live a couple of weeks ago. Bortle 4 night sky conditions, so it still has a significant amount of light pollution, but much better than the suburbs. Normally this should have been a relatively good area for Milky Way photography, but high level haze from wild fires up in Canada really decreased transparency in the atmosphere.

Despite that challenge, I managed to get a couple of decent shots, including my first successful tracked image using a new (to me) Benro Polaris Astro tracking head.

The first night trying to use it was a complete failure, so I spent much of the following day testing camera and Benro settings till I got things right. User error (ha!). Lots to learn with this new toy.

The first image here was from the first night, when I wasn't able to get the Benro to work. I could barely see the Milky Way, and this is a composite of 8 different images stacked with each other to give improved signal to noise.

The second image was from the following night, in a different spot. Visibility was even worse from the smoke haze, and I pre-visualized where the Milky Way would be on my phone.

In this case I really could barely see the Milky Way even after a long period of dark acclimation for my eyes. I was really pleased that I was able to get a somewhat decent image in exactly the same spot at the right time as predicted.

This time the Benro tracking head worked perfectly, which is why I think I was able to get even the image that I got.

Next stop on my Milky Way journey, several days car camping in Shawnee National Forest in SE Illinois. Bortle 3 night sky, so even darker than Brown County, and the visibility forecast is quite promising. If I don't melt from the heat I should come back with some really nice images.