After leaving the Great Plains Zoo and heading back towards home, in Iowa I saw a sign on the highway for the Loess Hills State Forest. Following the signs off the highway, I got closer to the bluffs from the Missouri River and a spot that had recently been burned …

On my way back from Mitchell, SD I stopped at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, SD. A friend told me there was a baby Pallas Cat there, so figured it would be worth it.

Naturally it was rainy that morning, and saw neither hide nor hair of the …

On the evening of Saturday the 14th the NOAA Aurora Dashboard gave pretty good odds of there being a good aurora the following day, with the view line almost reaching down into Missouri, with a chance of it being overhead as far south as northern Iowa and Nebraska.

Looking at …

On Friday after work, I decided to drive 2 hours, a bit over 100 miles, to northern Missouri which is the closest darkest skies I could find, some little place ran by the Missouri Department of Conservation called Seat Memorial Conservation Area.

Got to the area at about 8:30 …

The August 2017 eclipse passed directly over my grandparent's house, west of Saint Louis, which made figuring out where to watch it from easy. Totality for this one was a bit further away, but still within a day's drive, and a friend of mine had never seen an eclipse before …

That'll do, Andromeda, that'll do.

I'm still amazed this worked with all the light pollution around.

At least through my telescope filter: Set the color temperature to 3500K, then drop the black level until outside of the sun loses most of the color cast. Unfortunately a high haze today, so I couldn't focus too sharp.

I started taking pictures of the sun earlier this year when …

Taken 2024-05-11 in north central Missouri, about 20 miles south of the Iowa border. Found some little turnoff for a gate in a fence and camped for a few hours. I was about to leave disappointed, and during packing up "What are those weird lines I'm seeing north in the …