Joel's Latest Posts

I took this photo of the Pleiades in January, 2014, from the moderately light polluted skies of Fayetteville, Arkansas, using a TMB92L refractor telescope, a Canon T3i DSLR, an Orion SSAG autoguider and 50mm guidescope, on a  Celestron AVX mount.

The Pleiades are one of my favorite objects in the night sky. They look best through binoculars, which frame the cluster nicely and show off its cool blue stars. The nebula surrounding the Pleiades star cluster is only visible through long-exposure photography. The cluster is also known as M45, the Seven Sisters, and Subaru.

The Milky Way rising above the Paint Mines Open Space in Calhan, Colorado. 

This is a composite image made from two exposures, one for the Milky Way and a second for the foreground. Rebekah light painted the rocks with a flashlight to illuminate them and add interest to the image while I took a long exposure photo. I then combined the two exposures in Photoshop. 

This was taken with a Canon 70D DSLR camera and a Tokina 11=16mm f/2.8 AT-X116 Pro DX lens.

A photo of a colorful Colorado sunset I took some years ago from the bluffs behind my old townhouse. 

The townhouse complex was built around a series of bluffs in the neighborhood. I use to do some imaging from the bluffs at night, including of star trails and a lunar eclipse. It was also a great spot to get sunset shots like this because it provided such good views of the sky. 

This was taken with a Canon 70D and a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X116 Pro DX lens.

The peak of the total lunar eclipse that occurred on April 15, 2014.

I stayed up the entire night to photograph the eclipse from beginning to end. This was the second lunar eclipse I ever photographed, the first being back in 2010. 

This photograph is from the height of the eclipse, around 3:00 a.m. This is a long exposure photo, 3 seconds long, taken to bring out the reds caused by some sunlight leaking through around the edges of the Earth and reflected on the otherwise eclipsed moon. 

I took this photo a few years ago during a hike with Rebekah on the Scotsman Trail in the iconic Garden of the Gods Park located on the western edge of Colorado Springs. 

This was taken with a Canon 70D DSLR camera and a Canon EF-S 17-55mm lens. This is looking northeast, towards the park's main rock formations. The park is jam packed with tourists on the weekends and it can be difficult to get good photos free of people like this one. However, we went hiking on a weekend and managed the have the park mostly to ourselves. 

Pikes Peak as seen from Palmer Park, a series of bluffs at the heart of Colorado Springs that are great for hiking and mountain biking. 

I took this photo this morning while hiking Templeton Trail, a 4-mile loop that takes you around much of the park and offers wonderful views of Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, and downtown Colorado Springs. 

This was taken with a Canon 6D DSLR camera and a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens.

The Triangulum Galaxy (M33) in the constellation of Triangulum, one of the galaxies that comprises the Local Group, a galactic cluster that includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. 

I took this with a TMB92L refractor telescope, a Hutech-modified a Canon T3i DSLR, an Orion SSAG autoguider and 50mm guidescope, all riding on a Celestron AVX mount. 

Star trails from within the rock formations at the Paint Mines Open Space in Calhan, Colorado, a series of colorful rock formations located about 45 minutes east of Colorado Springs. 

This shot consists of one light-painted photo of the foreground to illuminate the rock formations and highlight their distinct colors, and more than 100 long exposure shots of the sky to produce the trailing effect of the stars. 

I took this photo of Saturn and four of its moons back in 2013, when I lived in Arkansas, on a night of incredible seeing. 

I captured this image by taking two exposures, one for the planet and a second for the moons, and then combining them into a single composite shot. I used a Celestron C6 SCT telescope on a CG-4 mount and an ASI120MC planetary/lunar imaging camera.

Rebekah and I took this photo in eastern Colorado, at the Karval Reservoir, located in the high plains about an hour and a half from Colorado Springs. 

This was our first time shooting in Karval, and we were impressed with how dark and desolate the area is. Other than a few cattle farms, it's surrounded by nothing but endless plains. We walked around the reservoir while we waited for the Milky Way to rise, and then began taking pics around midnight.