June 2026

Welcome to Hank’s June 2026 Astrophotography Blog. You’d think that amateur astrophotographers here in the frozen north would enjoy observing in the summer, when the nights are warmer! But it turns out that around the time of the summer solstice, it’s not “dark,” or when the light pollution from the Sun doesn’t impact taking photos of the dark sky, until about 11:00 pm. Then about 3:00 am, the sky is starting to light up again, and it’s time to put the telescope to bed. 4 hours max! During the winter solstice, it’s dark about 10 or 11 hours each night. My latitude is at about 43 degrees north, so the Sun’s location on the horizon really makes a big difference. But for visual astronomy, Summer has January beat!

This month, since I wasn’t going to be able to capture many hours at one sitting, I captured 39 five minute exposures on the 11th and 24 more on the 13th of an old favority, M101. You can compare the two, and see what a difference a couple of hours of exposure time can make!

I also downloaded a Telescope Live image of IC1396, the Elephant Trunk Nebula, that was taken from an observatory in Spain. It was taken with a scientific grade telescope using a monochrome camera. These cameras use filters to separate out the different light frequencies, typically just gathering a narrow band of light. My camera, on the other hand, is a “one shot color” camera, and each of its 10 million sensors have 4 pixels with Red, Green, and Blue filters. For some reason, there are two green filters. One shot color cameras are not as sensitive to light, but for beginners like me, it is really much easier to capture targets.
The mono camera filters used to capture IC1396 included frames taken with the standard red, green and blue light filters, but also included Luminance frames, which are mono photos without any filters, and Ha (Hydrogen Alpha) bandwidth images. Red light frequencies gather light between 400 and 484 THz (Terahertz). Green light frequencies are between 526 and 606 THz. Blue light frequencies are between 631 and 670 THz. Ha light frequency is about 457 THz, so it’s on the red end of the spectrum. Since we can’t see Ha light, we assign it a color (often red, since it is on that side of the spectrum). Ha is outside of the range of light that we can see, but because during processing of the image we can make that a light visible with a color we can see, we can take a look at things we would not be able to see otherwise.
When you think about it, there are many things we can’t see, but we can sense them. Like the wind, or the warmth from a stove. In astrophotography, we can’t see or feel Ha, so we give it a color. Which means if I wanted, I could have made those red parts blue, or green, or a combination of them….

If you were outside this month after sunset, there were a pair of planets in the west. This photo was taken about 9:30 pm on June 11th. The bright one, as always, is Venus, and the other is Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Venus is small in comparison to Jupiter, but is much closer to us and the Sun, so it appears bigger and brighter.

Until next time, Clear Skies. -Hank