Welcome to Hank’s July 2026 Astrophotography Blog. One thing the Black Hills Astronomical Society does for outreach is offer Private Star Parties in the region. This month on the first, we met a young family vacationing at the Badlands, a beautiful National Park with great skies about an hour east of Rapid City. In fact, the Badlands National Park Conservancy https://badlandsconservancy.org/ a non-profit group, has worked with the Park over the last few years to improve their lighting problems to become a DarkSky International certified Dark Sky site this year! This is a big deal, as so much of our night skies are disappearing.
At the Private Star Party, BHAS members set up their telescopes and were able to give a tour of the night sky for the family. I was there with my Seestar S50 telescope and here are a few photos of what the Badlands looks like, for those of you who have never been there, and M81, M86, and the Moon.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, Bortel is the scale of light pollution in the night sky. Bortel 9 is New York City. Bortel 1 is no light pollution. The Badlands is a Bortel 2 area—Good night skies for viewing the stars, but not perfect (you can still see the glow of Rapid City in the west). Rick and Richard, two of our BHAS members, have been exploring if there are any Bortel 1 areas in our region that are on public lands, and have discovered a few in southeastern Montana, about 4 hours from Custer. So, a group of us drove up there and camped for a night and got to experience what Bortel 1 is like. Simply put, it is amazing. The Milky Way goes all the way to the horizon and isn’t blocked out by the glow of towns or cities. The stars are crisp looking, and it makes a huge difference in doing astrophotography. Here are some photos from that night. First is a photo of the gang that got there early, what the horizon looks like (flat and no trees), and the sunset. And finally, the images I took with my Seestar. My favorite—M8. Wow.
My last image for you is from data I purchased from Telescope Live. The Fireworks Galaxy, NGC 6946, was taken in Spain in Bortel 1 skies. It is an HaLRGB image, which means that it includes data taken with a Hydrogen Alpha filter, Luminance filter, Red filter, Green filter and a Blue filter. I’m enjoying working with images taken with amazing equipment in great skies.
Finally, as you may know, I’m in a two man band called Dust-Up. Jeff Sweet, my songwriting partner, and I recently released a new album that has an Astronomy song on it called “Before I Go to Bed”!!!!!! Astronomy song? Here’s a link to listen to the song and if you like it, download the album https://dust-up.com/freebies for Free!
Until next time, Clear Skies! -Hank
