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I recently took on a fun backyard challenge: photographing the Fox Face Nebula (NGC 1788) using the William Optics UltraCat 76. It’s not a target you hear about very often, and that’s exactly what drew me to it. While Orion is packed with famous, high-contrast objects, this one tends to fly under the radar, especially... […]

Last updated: November 26, 2025. If you find this helpful and buy through my links, I may receive a small commission. The ZWO ASI585MC Air is a compact, self-contained smart astrophotography camera that replaces the usual laptop, controller, and cable mess with a single, lightweight unit you control from your phone or tablet. This is... […]

Last updated: November 21, 2025. If you find this helpful and buy through my links, I may receive a small commission. Over the past few months, I have been testing the DWARF mini smart telescope from the backyard and at a dark-sky site. This smart telescope is currently the world’s smallest, weighing just 840 grams. ... […]

Two retired U.S. Air Force F-15 jets have joined the flight research fleet at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, transitioning from military service to a new role enabling breakthrough advancements in aerospace. The F-15s will support supersonic flight research for NASA’s Flight Demonstrations and Capabilities project, including testing for the Quesst mission’s […]

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission with agency astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov returned to Earth after a long-duration mission aboard the International Space Station. During their stay, Cardman, Fincke, and Yui contributed more than 850 hours of research to help prepare humanity […]

NASA satellites are helping Maine oyster farmers pick better sites and plan when oysters will be ready to harvest.

Schmidt Sciences has unveiled details on four ambitious observatories to monitor the dynamic cosmos, with data from all four expected by 2029. The post Four Privately Funded Observatories in the Next Three Years appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

This year offers an interesting mix of celestial coverups: a total solar eclipse viewable from Spain and two deep lunar eclipses (one total, one not quite) visible across North America. The fourth, an annular solar eclipse, will be confined to the bottom of the world. The post Solar and Lunar Eclipses in 2026 appeared first […]

Two new smallsat missions, named SPARCS and BlackCAT, promise to examine stellar flares and explosions in the early universe. The post Two New CubeSats to Monitor Nearby Stars and Distant Black Holes appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

 Anybody still coming here?

My own Hubble View! These galaxies lie between 10 to 50 million light years away. How many galaxies do you see? A pretty tricky part of the sky to image, really. You're utilizing almost your entire field of view with an 80mm scope, so dealing with all that comes with wide-field. This is the best […]

A nice clear night last night until around 12:30 when clouds rolled in. Managed to get this image of the lovely M51 Whirlpool galaxy. It lies around 23 million light years away and it is interacting with a smaller galaxy (yellow~ish bulge to the left). Three supernova (star explosions) have been detected in this galaxy […]