Justin Pickens
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justinthedark.bsky.social
Justin Pickens
@justinthedark.bsky.social
170 followers 83 following 140 posts
Father | Husband | Astrophotographer

Astro Blog:
www.justinthedark.com
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justinthedark.bsky.social
Talk about #astrophotography! It’s been cloudy for what seems like months, but at least we just got our space selfie back from Crunch Labs!

space.crunchlabs.com/selfie/aODjoYV

#astronomy #space
A selfie from the GUS satellite by Crunch Labs featuring a screen with a family photo with the earth as the backdrop.
May 23, 2025 at 9:43 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
Sometimes there’s a steep learning curve to #astrophotography. Last night was a struggle to focus my Sky-Watcher 127 to my new ASI662MC. This only compounded by my complete inability to plate solve, so I could only rely on manual polar alignment.

I guess it’s to the YouTubes.

#astronomy #space

A photo of the Tycho crater in the southern hemisphere of the moon.
April 13, 2025 at 2:00 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
First light for my new #Dwarf3 smart telescope. It was easy to navigate the app and polar align the scope. I left it out for a total of 5.45 hours of integration with no problems and only 6 rejected subs. This thing will shine when summer targets are back!

#astrophotography #astronomy #space
Image of the Whirlpool galaxy on the backdrop of the darkness of space dotted with stars.
April 8, 2025 at 7:32 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
I imaged my first globular cluster of the year! The M3 cluster is one of the largest and brightest and is made up of around 500,000 stars. It is estimated to be 11.4 billion years old and roughly 32,600 light-years from Earth.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space
An image of the M3 globular cluster. A spherical shape grouping of 500,000 stars.
March 16, 2025 at 3:20 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
We had quite a bit of cloud cover last night, but my little #Seestar tried its best to capture the Blood Moon. Here’s a timelapse of the evening on 20 second intervals

#astrophotography #astronomy #space
March 14, 2025 at 3:59 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
I took a two minute video on my #seestar in raw and stacked the video in ASI Studio - Planetary Stacker as a bit of practice for tomorrow. Fingers crossed for clear skies!

#astrophotography #astronomy #moon
Image of the moon 83% illuminated.
March 13, 2025 at 12:31 AM
justinthedark.bsky.social
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I’ve been swamped at work and needed a little break from social media. Here’s 8 hours of integration on Markarian’s Chain from my #Seestar S50. I’ve been working on some other multi-night images and will post soon.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space
An image of collection of galaxies group together call the Markarian’s Chain.
March 12, 2025 at 4:51 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
There has been an abundance of clouds over the last two weeks hampering any real astronomy time. However, I brought some telescopes to my kid’s school for their STEM night! We took these photos on my #Seestar S50 while waiting for it to get dark.

#astronomy #astrophotography #space
A photo of the sun with sun spots. A photo of the sun setting behind tree branches.
February 26, 2025 at 4:59 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
I shot Bode’s Galaxy as the first DSO target for my Skymax 127mm. It appears this focal length really shows the backlash from my SA GTi. I guess more fine tuning is needed. This was 4 hours of 1 min subs.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space
A bright spiral galaxy, M81 (Bode’s Galaxy), with a glowing white core and sweeping blue-tinged spiral arms, set against a dark star-speckled background.
February 17, 2025 at 7:34 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
Happy Valentine’s Day, Bluesky! To celebrate, here’s an image I took of the Heart Nebula. I hope your day is as beautiful as this region of space.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space #valentinesday
The image shows the Heart Nebula named for its heart-like shape, composed of glowing gas and dust set against a backdrop of countless stars. The nebula exhibits warm golden hues along its edges, contrasting with cooler blue tones in its interior. Bright clusters of young stars are visible within, illuminating the surrounding cosmic clouds. The structure appears wispy and intricate, with dark voids and filaments weaving through the luminous gas.
February 14, 2025 at 3:09 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
It’s been cloudy and raining all week so I went back and reprocessed an old stack of M33 the Triangulum Galaxy. I guess we call this an official #TBT.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space #seestar
The image shows the Triangulum Galaxy with a bright, dense core and swirling arms extending outward, set against a dark background filled with numerous stars. The galaxy exhibits a mix of white, blue, and faint pink hues, indicating regions of active star formation and older star populations. The structure appears slightly irregular, with scattered bright spots within its arms.
February 13, 2025 at 3:44 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
IC 405 - The Flaming Star Nebula

This proved to be a difficult target to image with the #Seestar. I totaled 3 hours of integration on this target with 1100 x 10 second sub frames. Processed in #PixInsight

#Astrophotography #astronomy #space
A photo of the Flaming Star Nebula taken on a Seestar S50.
February 9, 2025 at 4:21 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
First light for my new Skymax 127mm telescope with an ASI533MC-Pro camera. I’ve never done planetary imaging before so I’ve got a huge learning curve. I also know the focus wasn’t great but I’m still really excited!

#astrophotography #astronomy #space #moon #jupiter
Image of the moon taken on a Skymax 127mm telescope and ASI533MC-Pro camera. Image of Jupiter taken on a Skymax 127mm telescope and ASI533MC-Pro camera.
February 8, 2025 at 5:18 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
My first shots of #galaxy season! Here’s M81 Bode’s Galaxy and M82 the Cigar Galaxy as shot on my #Seestar S50.

This is just a quick 3 hour shot processed in #PixInsight.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space
A photo of two galaxies. M81 Bode’s Galaxy and M82 the Cigar Galaxy.
February 6, 2025 at 6:30 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
I spent the last two week (between clouds) shooting a total of 12 hours of integration on the Orion Nebula with my #seestar S50 and processed in #PixInsight. I think this will do for 2025 and will revisit Orion next year.

#astrophotography #space #astronomy
A picture of M42 The Great Orion Nebula imaged on a Seestar S50 smart telescope in mosaic mode. The image is a stack of 12 hours worth of 10 second sub frames combined and weighted together and processed in a dedicated astronomy suite called PixInsight.
February 4, 2025 at 6:23 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
I’ve got my #seestar imaging the heart nebula for a fun Valentine’s Day project. However, I had to take a quick shot of the moon. Venus and the Moon look splendid next to each other this evening.

#astrophotography
A single shot of the moon 13% illuminated in a waxing crescent phase.
February 2, 2025 at 2:03 AM
justinthedark.bsky.social
I’ve been adding to my count of M42 subs from my #seestar. This was from a couple weeks ago with just 4 hours of integration. I’ve got another 12 hour stacking now! Can’t wait to process the results.

#astrophotography @kat-astro-bot.bsky.social #astronomy #space #science #space
January 29, 2025 at 3:21 AM
justinthedark.bsky.social
Here’s my attempt at the Monkey Head Nebula shot on my #seestar S50 over two nights on Jan 19-20 for a total integration of 4 hours. I ran it through a narrowband normalization with an HOO palette in #Pixinsight.

#astronomy #astrophotography #deepsky #space #zwo
January 27, 2025 at 7:48 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
I finished this 6 hour mosaic of the Horsehead and Flame nebulae 2 weeks ago on my #seestar and processed in #PixInsight. This is always a tough target for me, but I think this one came out ok.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space #zwo #deepsky
January 26, 2025 at 5:45 PM
justinthedark.bsky.social
Rosette Nebula

I took this over 4 nights with my #Seestar S50. I stacked 3636 x 10 second subframes in PixInsight for a total of 10 hours of integration. Then I followed my standard dual-band processing.

It’s impressive what you can get from this telescope.

#astrophotography #astronomy #space
January 24, 2025 at 6:51 PM