May 2026

Welcome to Hank’s May 2026 Astrophotography Blog. We’re getting into our Star Party season, I had a few nights of good viewing at the home observatory, and I’m continuing my processing of images from Telescope Live….

To start off with, I thought I’d share a couple of photos I took this month of what my home observatory looks like. It’s a plastic duck blind shelter where I can push the roof off to a support that sits off to the side. You can see the telescope peeking its head out from the duck blind, and behind the window closest to the observatory is where I can control the telescope. The trees in the distance block about 25 degrees of viewing, up from the horizon, but I have a great view from East to West, looking South. To the north, not so good….

This month I was able to capture images for four nights. First off, Bode’s nebula. If you look closely, it seems to have a 3-D feel to it. I’m doing most of my post processing with PixInsight now, and it really pops out those details. I also captured three different Globular Clusters. These Globular Clusters are within the Milky Way galaxy and are made up of old stars that are gravitationally attracted to each other. Some can have over 100,000 stars in them!

I did the processing on two images I got from Telescope Live. They were taken with telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere. The first is called the Dark Shark Nebula and is in the Cepheus Constellation. The second is called the Eagle Nebula and is in the Serpens Constellation. I’m learning a lot about PixInsight software in processing these high quality images. It really does a nice job in bringing out the details.

Finally, the Badlands National Park Conservancy invited our Black Hills Astronomical Society out to an event they were holding at the Sheep Mountain Table in the Park. It was a full moon night, so we didn’t see too much other than the sunset, moon rise, and a couple of planets, but the skies and landscape was amazing. If you haven’t been to the Badlands National Park, it is worth the trip. The Conservancy is helping the Park with their application to get their Dark Sky Certification (our skies are becoming more and more light polluted every year!!!) and are helping them raise funds to put in a research grade telescope/observatory. It was great to be with them for their event. They also help the Park with their annual Astronomy Festival, July 17-19. Here are some photos I took up at Sheep Mountain Table.

Until next time, Clear Skies! -Hank