Learn Astrophotography with Frank!

Every year I try to take a better image of M81, Bode’s Galaxy. It’s located about 12 million light-years away, which is unfathomably far but close by galactic standards. Look closely, and you’ll see a faint splotchiness in the background. This is the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN,) composed of gases that lie just outside of…

A lot of things have to come together for a good image of the planets. The air needs to be as still as possible, the planet you’re imaging needs to be as directly overhead as possible, and the planet itself should be as close to the Earth as possible. And then, all your equipment has…

Here’s my latest image of M81 and M82, Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, respectively – together they are sometimes called “Bode’s Galaxies.” I’ve imaged these many times over the years; in fact M81 was one of the very first deep sky objects I attempted to photograph like 10 years ago. I’m happy with this…

Located about 33,600 light-years away within the constellation Pegasus, Messier 15 is a globular cluster – a tight, ancient ball of stars on the outskirts of our galaxy. The Milky Way is surrounded by many such clusters; this one’s special because it’s known to host a rare intermediate-sized black hole at its center, and it…

This is actually only a portion of a string of galaxies that make up the Virgo supercluster of galaxies, around 50-60 million light-years away.

I trained my telescope at this pair of nebulas in Orion for a total of 10 hours. On the right is the iconic Horsehead nebula – actually a dark cloud of gas in front of the illuminated nebula behind it. To the left is the Flame Nebula. In between, in the upper-left, is the bright…