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 …

Naturally, Cohost announces they're shutting down right after I start posting photos there. And now I need somewhere else to do that. And that somewhere is now here.

Stock Pelican with a highly modified Flex theme. Which still needs more modifications done. I need to style the links on the …

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 …

Upside: I can transport the telescope and all parts of the tripod in my car without anything rolling around, and can maybe carry it in one trip.

Downside: all of the bags.

Bonus cat. And it just dwarfs my camera bag

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 …