Michael Mauldin

The second night of the aurora here in Texas was much less vivid, but this 2.6 hour integration of the stars swirling over our ranch is still pretty.

Stacked, 312 exp x 30 seconds, lightest pixels merged.

Canon 5d4 fs, Rokinon 10mm SP f/3.5
ISO 1600 at f/5.6, LrC and PS CS6.

With no more dark sky adventures planned for 2025, I've posted 16 wallpaper-sized nightscapes on our website:

lazytoad.com/astronomy/ni...

Although my focus has been mainly RGB+Ha Milky Way landscapes, the Comet Lemmon got most of my October focus.

Feel free to download, share, or print.

Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon over the Very Large Array, October 19, 2025

Tracked, Stacked, Golden Hour Blend.

Canon R5m2 and EF 300mm f/4L

tracker: Star Adventurer
sky: 56x30 sec ISO 6400 f/5.0
foreground: 1/500 sec ISO 200 f/5.6

PixInsight, Pixelmator Pro, and LrC

@thenrao.bsky.social

Not sure how we can exceed 24 hours a day, unless we're counting both screens.

In Valley of the Gods, Utah, shooting Comet Lemmon and Orion.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the Tiffen Double Fog 3 filter for astrophotography.

The fog filter spreads the light from the brighter stars to make the image match what your eyes see in the night sky.

My daughters... many years ago.

Sadly StarNet2 splits the halo from the star...

Working on ways to combine unfogged nebulae with the fog halos...

I had a very productive trip to Utah last month.

That Tiffen double fog 3 filter really makes the constellations stand out.

Oh, and a small meteor trail, lower left.

From Horsehoof Camp in the Needles District of Canyonlands NP.

The Milky Way, Jupiter, Orion, and the Zodiacal light, all together.

Canon R5m2, vis+ha mod, Tracked, Stacked, Blue hour and narrowband blend.

Perseid meteor and the Milky Way over the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend NP, August 2025.

First draft of my first night of shooting at Big Bend on Friday, 8/22/2025.

Looking south from Paint Gap Road.

Tracked, stacked, blue hour blend, 51 minutes total of RGB, Ha, and O-III.

The Andromeda Galaxy as seen from Valley of the Gods, Utah.

EXIF:
Canon R5m2 Vis+Ha mod by Spencer's.
Canon EF 300mm f/4.0L
Star Adventurer tracker
No filter
90x60 second exposures, ISO 3200, f5.6
Processed in PixInsight (with RC Astro plugins)
Final color and cropping in LrC

That time I put a Toad Sticker on the Pyramid of Menkaure in Giza. This is the smallest of the three large pyramids.

Only one pyramid is open each year, to cut down on moisture damage.

I took the sticker off after the photo... June 2001.

Yep... was about 2 feet deep when I did it in 2013... you need a good Jeep. Call the Park Ranger to check conditions.

www.nps.gov/care/planyou...

Drove across the ford once... but I usually use the entrance farther East.

Today Debbie and I have been married 25 years. We had a simple ceremony on the beach in Grand Cayman on February 23, 2000.

Pirate Week, Georgetown, Grand Cayman, October 2000.

My 2023 Rubicon Ecodiesel climbing an obstacle on the Rubicon Trail. Nick, the guide from Barlow's Adventures, is spotting me.

Photo by Matt Altman.

Getting to the top of the Spanish Bottom from the Dollhouse was a couple of miles, but not too bad.

The climb down from the top to the river was 1000 foot elevation change and another mile or so horizontally.

It was a 1000 foot hike down to the river, and 1000 feet back up.

But I was a younger man, then, only 55.

GPS coordinates, 38.16 N, -109.94 W, looking NNE.

The "Spanish Bottom" along the Colorado River below the "Dollhouse" in Canyonlands Maze District.

The flat area is the result of a collapse of an ancient sinkhole within the last 100 million years, and was formed before the Colorado River was there.

www.utahtrails.com/Canyonlands%...

The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 - Nature Medicine Nature Medicine - The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

Here's the link:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here's the issue:
www.science.org/content/arti...

My problem is that, IMHO, the lab leak theory was suppressed for non-scientific reasons. I don't want science to be corrupted by politics, from either side.

The White Rim Trail is perhaps my favorite place to Jeep!

The Corso Vitorio Emanuelle II, Rome Italy, 2018 and 2025.

Actually, the Lancet paper was more balanced... I forgot that the first paper in March 2021 was in Nature.

What bothers me about it is that two of its sponsors (Fauci and Daszak) did not put their names on it. They also claimed "evidence showed it was not not purposefully manipulated".

Care to weigh in on the Lancet and the Proximal Origins paper?

Big Bend National Park, Mariscal Mine, view of the Chisos Mountains through a window in an old mine building, 2014.

A N D R O M E D A Redux A mind-blowing super-hi-res image of our galaxy’s sibling

Is this another Monday distraction from, well, everything?

Yes, but *what* a distraction: a jaw-dropping 416 megapixel mosaic of the Andromeda Galaxy!

badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/a-n-d-r-o-...

🧪🔭