Jim returned from a recent 5-day trip to Death Valley. He was lucky to visit during a fair weather window between rain storms. Much of Death Valley was unusually green and Badwater Basin was temporarily transformed into pluvial Lake Manly. Jim had one clear night to try out the Seestar S50 smart telescope he got for Christmas. This single image is actually a stacked mosaic of 180 20sec exposures. The Seestar iPhone app (also available on Android) makes often complicated astrophotography very easy. The app will stack the images, and denoise them automatically, creating a jpg. But the telescope can also save every (20sec) exposure for post-processing. Jim imported the 180 images into Siril, a free astrophotography image stacker & editor. Although the jpg produced automatically is good, processing the images in Siril can greatly improve the results. This photo is a 1 hour stacked image of the Orion Nebula (M42), a popular beginner’s target since it’s easy to find and visible on-screen after just a couple exposures. The Seestar was configured to track the nebula so stars are not elongated.
After returning to San Diego, he photographed the King Tide Jan 4th at La Jolla’s Children’s Cove. A mainly overcast morning had some sun break through, creating a favorable backlight.
