Happy Ides of November to you. Here is a very windy sunrise from Stout’s Point on Petit Jean Mountain.
10/4/2025 Buffalo and Elk
Angie, Jack, and I left the house at 4AM to travel 2 1/2 hours to see elk at Ponca. They are best at dawn and dusk and I prefer dawn. It was very foggy though I was able to dehaze it some in processing. After this, we looped around and visited the Red Bluff Overlook on the Buffalo River. Even with a 14mm lens, I had a to do a hand held mosaic for this shot.
9/28/2025 The Squid and Flying Bat Nebulae
Three months and a week ago, I started this astrophotography project, my longest to date. The big red bell shape in the middle is SH2-129, the Flying Bat Nebula. Just 11 years ago, in 2011, a patient and dedicated amateur astronomer named Nicolas Outters discovered something odd, a green semi-oval shaped nebula inside or in front of it. The squid is dim. After four hours of integration, I thought I could see it there. After eight, I was sure. But people said it needed at least 20 hours. This weekend, I was able to add another 16 hours on it with my Samyang 135mm and ASI2600MC Pro camera and an L-Extreme F2 dual narrowband filter. This is a total of 296 five minute integrations. or 24.66 hours. Click it for a closeup.
The red Flying Bat is glowing in Hydrogen Alpha light while the Squid is glowing in Oxygen III light, between them those are the two most prominent types of emission nebula. Here is someone else’s close up of the squid so that you can see how it got that name. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flying_Bat_and_Squid_nebulae_narrowfield.jpg
I may try this again next year with my 11″ SCT, it has a focal length times the Samyang 135.
