February 2026

Welcome to Hank’s February 2026 Astrophotography Blog. Since taking up my Astronomy hobby in 2020, I’ve been looking at the night sky by visually checking out what’s overhead, by looking at objects through telescope and binocular optics, and by using telescopes, cameras and computer software to capture images of what I see, or Astrophotography.

On the last evening of this month, Marianne and I did a little visual astronomy, as there was an alignment of planets in the sky, where under the right conditions we might see Mars, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter who were all lined up along the equatorial—we just had to show up at the right time, with the right sky conditions, when it was dark. Plus, the Moon was in the lineup, too! Of course there are always issues….such as the nearly full Moon’s brightness that blocked our seeing some of the planets, Venus and Mercury were sinking really low in the horizon behind some clouds, and some, like Neptune and Uranus who were in the lineup, too, but are so faint you need a telescope to see them. But what the heck, we were in Rapid City at sundown, so we headed to one of our favorite spots in town—Dinosaur Park. This park sits on a hill that splits Rapid City in half, so you have great views of the east and west sides of town. The night sky really spreads out before you, plus you are surrounded by giant concrete dinosaurs! The wind was blowing and the temperature was freezing, but we were able to see the Moon and Jupiter near each other before we headed to the warmth of the car. The first image shows a dinosaur towering over the Moon, and with the second you are seeing the Moon in front of the dinosaur’s nose, and above the head of the dinosaur, about the same distance as the Moon, is Jupiter. The other planets in the lineup, eluded us.

Visual astronomy is easy—just look up. But Astrophotography is different. To grow in this hobby, I’m taking a look at ways that I can gather images of things I could never take using my current equipment and location and upgrade my skills on processing more complex data. To that end, I’m subscribing to a service called Telescope Live, that has telescopes all over the world, set up in clear sky areas. What they can provide me, are images taken with professional grade telescopes and cameras located in places like the mountains of Chile and remote areas of Australia. Most of their images use not only the standard red, green and blue filters, but filters that can capture different “invisible” light frequencies, such a Hydrogen, Sulfur and Oxygen light. To process these images, I’m starting to learn to use PixInsight, a professional grade Astrophotography software. Where this is taking me at the moment is a steep learning curve to learn about how these images are processed. Where it is taking me in the long run, is for me to work with data sets where I’ll be able to learn new things about astrophotography and our Universe. I’ll continue to take photos with my backyard equipment, but this will open some new opportunities for me.

Here’s a couple of images I took this month that you’ve seen before, M42, M51, and the Leo Triplet. What’s different with these is that I have processed them using my new software, PixInsight.

This last image is from data that I got from Telescope Live. NGC5078 was taken in Chile, using a research grade telescope and a monochrome (not color) camera. It can be viewed from the Southern Hemisphere. The data I used to process the image had Red, Green, and Blue filtered images and Luminance images (Luminance means that no filter was used and it just picked up light that wasn’t filtered). This galaxy is seen edge-on and has a magnitude of 11.8. Magnitude is a measure of how bright it is, and it is a scale where the bigger the number, the fainter it is. So, when we can see things in the night sky with our eyes they have a magnitude of 6 or less. With my own telescope, I usually photograph targets that are a magnitude of 10 or less. So NGC5078 with a magnitude of 11.8—it is pretty faint! I’m making plenty of mistakes as I try to figure out this PixInsight software, but hopefully things will improve as time goes on!

Also, if you read this before bedtime on March 2, those of us in much of the USA will have a chance to see a total Lunar Eclipse. At my location in South Dakota (Mountain Time) on the early morning of March 3, totality will be just after 4:00 am, which means the darkening will begin a couple of hours earlier…. Do an internet search for your location!

Until next time, Clear Skies!

-Hank