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rick-wayne.bsky.social
Astrophotographer, Ski Patrol instructor, paddler. Husband, Dad. Rabid progressive. Member of Madison Astronomical Society. See (and buy!) my work: redwolfastro.com.
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Much of North America saw the aurorae last spring. Janet and I almost missed it, but a friend texted me and we dragged our aged butts out to Blue Mound. Awful glad we did. This is what Photoshop's "auto tone" made of my panorama. Naked-eye, wasn't quite so wild. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

2024 Eclipse #3! My favorite, just past totality and just before the diamond ring. The huge prominence at 4 o'clock was naked-eye visible the whole time, it was crazy how you could see the whole corona but with this tiny spark just blazing out. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Here's the closeup shot of totality in 2024, through the 8" RC. HDR composite of three exposures.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Next up are a few shots of the 2024 total eclipse. We went to Paragould, AR and I shot from the motel parking lot. This is a composite of 6 different images from 2 scopes -- HDR widefield for the corona, and three from the 8" for detail. Exposures 1/2000" to 1/30". #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula. Ha+OIII+RGB stars. Wikipedia: "...formed by the fast stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 colliding with and energizing the slower moving wind ejected by the star when it became a red giant". WR 136 is the center bright star. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

I originally got the 8" scope for Galaxy Season, the spring when the nebula-rich part of the Milky Way has moved into the daytime sky and so distant galaxies are The Thing. But it also has enough reach for tiny planetary nebulae. Here is M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 8 days ago • 3 comments

Continuing with that one magical night at Newport State Park, here's what greeted my snoozeful eyes as I was packing up. May 2023. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

This is the target I was going for during the night I shot the previous Milky Way image: M94, the Croc's Eye Galaxy. Small for my rig at only 10 arcminutes; deconvolution extracted detail that was blurred by seeing and tracking effects.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Just gonna put this out there every once in a while: #redwolfastro means redwolfastro.com, where you can buy prints of my stuff. Won't deluge you, I promise, but just an occasional shout-out.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Newport Park is still my favorite astro place. Frequently I'll set a camera up to do some Milky Way imaging while the scope looks at some deep sky target. This is from May 2023, while I was imaging M94, the Croc's Eye. The lakeshore is really wonderful to work from. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 11 days ago • 3 comments

Stars in a deep sky image are invariably in our own galaxy and just happen to be in the line of sight. But Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagak, whose avocation is supernovae, found one (SN 2023ixf) in M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. ONE STAR visible from 21M light years! #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Now caught up in time to my current rig: 8" Richey-Chétien scope, cooled mono cam with filter wheel, big-prism off-axis guider with a super-sensitive guide camera on a chonker of a mount. NGC 4565, the Needle Galaxy. About five hours of integration time, 3/2023. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 13 days ago • 6 comments

Another lucky imaging attempt, this one (obviously) Saturn. I thought I had experimented with a 12" scope at some point but my notes say this too was with the 8" RC. September 2022. I have another Jupiter and Saturn in the gallery but ehh, not as good. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

The Big Guy himself. Processed from 3 sets of video frames (R, G, and B, 90" each). Shot with the RC when Jupiter was in opposition (closest to Earth). No moons visible, but the Great Red Spot is obvious. September 2022. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

After joining madisonastro.org, I started using the Yanna Research Station dark site. Electricity, concrete pads, dark skies, a building with a couch to sleep on -- ahhh! LRGB image shot with the 8" Richey-Chrétien in July 2022: M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Found out that the Richey-Chrétien actually is a sharp scope when you focus it! (Admittedly this is sharpened with software!) M13, the great globular cluster in Hercules.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Couple of images from today's 50 states protest in Madison. My wife is in the first one. Yelling.

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

Still feeling out the 8" RC, struggling with focus. M106, a nice spiral. (FOV here ~0.5°.) With my cooled astro cam, which has tiny little pixels so the 0.3"/px image scale is way undersampled. Soon I'd learn that, ehh, doesn't matter as much as they say. March '22. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Sorry for hiatus -- family member in cardiac ICU. (She's doing better now.) Spring ("galaxy season") '22: a new chapter in my deep sky career, an 8" RC with 1625 lovely mm of FL. Here, the Whale and Hockey Stick Galaxies. About 2h integration with my Pentax DSLR. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 20 days ago • 2 comments

An all-time personal favorite: The West Veil part of the Cygnus supernova remnant. False-but-plausible narrowband colors (R=H, G=S, B=O) with RGB stars. Taken with my 70mm refractor, ~6 hours integration. Got a superb metal print of this on my wall. (You can too!) #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 26 days ago • 1 comment

And, catching up, here's another SHO image, this one of the Cygnus Wall in the North America Nebula. Both of these images were in fall 2021, guess my catalog's a bit out of order.

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

A two-fer today, neglected to post yesterday. First up is the Eagle Nebula, I think my first narrowband image in the Hubble (SHO) palette made famous by this very object. (You can see the famous Pillars of Creation if you squint.) Shot on vacation in the UP. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

Oh noes! I lied to you, sorry! Yesterday's Rho/Antares pic is actually just out of frame in this one. My bad. So, Milky Way from the extremely dark skies of Newport State Park, looking over Lake Michigan. Actually took this while I was shooting the Rho image. 6/2021. #redwolfastro #astrophotography

submitted 31 days ago • 2 comments