Closeup of solar prominences

H-alpha full solar disk, monochrome

H-alpha full solar disk, color, inverted

H-alpha full solar disk, color

SUNday! H-alpha images of Feb. 15, 2026 sun. Some nice prominences are visible.🧪

With the My Pillow Guy running, I’ll be expecting the Bass-O-Matic next.

The star Propus (ETA Geminorum) is a variable star in a triple star system. “The Three Body Problem “ anyone?

Narrowband image of IC 443, the Jellyfish Nebula. About 8 hours acquisition from my back yard with a Redcat 71 WIFD telescope, Optolong L-Enhance filter, and ASI2600MC camera, Pixinsight.

Color image of IC 443, the Jellyfish Nebula without narrowband normalization. About 8 hours acquisition from my back yard with a Redcat 71 WIFD telescope, Optolong L-Enhance filter, and ASI2600MC camera.

Two takes on the Jellyfish Nebula, a supernova remnant in Gemini about 5000 light years away. The supernova that created this may have happened around 30,000 years ago. Estimated at 70 light years in size. Compare that to our solar system, which is 0.5 to 1.5 light years in size. Click to enlarge.🧪

Telescope image of the waning moon on Feb. 4, 2026

Quick image of the moon between data collection for nebulae 🧪

Telescope image of almost-full moon on Feb. 2, 2026

Clear skies last night. 🧪

But... DOJ is doing a great job redacting the names of the rich and powerful!

Telescope image of the waxing moon Jan. 29, 2026

Between the moon on one side and clouds on the other, I couldn't get much data on deep space objects last night. If all you have is the moon, you take pictures of the moon. 🧪

I will comment that ICE isn’t the military. The new batch of recruits is a group of vigilante racists created as tRump’s personal Gestapo.

No, I'm in North America. The telescope was polar aligned and I flipped the image during processing because the optics invert the image orientation.

I strongly urge you to block Federal funding of ICE when the spending bill comes up for a vote this week. A partial government shutdown is a small price to pay for limiting the ability of these rogue "Federal agents" to destroy the lives of US Citizens. The murder of two innocent citizens by ICE agents is an atrocity. The current implementation of ICE is a consequence of the Trump administration's creation of a group of poorly trained and poorly regulated vigilantes who are not accountable to anyone. It is unacceptable for so-called "law-enforcement" personnel to hide their identities and deprive people of their rights without following the rule of law. We must draw a distinction between legitimate law-enforcement and these people. I have worked with the laboratory sections of CBP and other Federal law-enforcement agencies, and in my experience these are careful and responsible public servants. The actions of rogue ICE agents is giving legitimate agencies a bad name. We must defund ICE until strong protections are put in place to protect the rights of our citizens. Please have the courage to stand up for your country and your constituents!

My letter to my NH senators #senatorjeanneshaheen and #senatormaggiehassan. Too long for the character limit and the image is truncated, so the letter is the alt text.

Telescope image of the moon

Crescent moon, January 24, 2026 🧪

Full solar disk, H-alpha, Jan. 24, 2026

Crescent moon, Jan. 24, 2026

Last night's moon and today's sun. Coming next -- snow, and plenty of it! 🧪

And none of it covered by the mainstream media. 😡

What it's really about.

I wonder if Epstein ever visited Venezuela?

White light solar disk image taken with a SeeStar S50.

Inverted solar H-alpha image taken with a Lunt LS60MT DS telescope.

Solar H-alpha image taken with a Lunt LS60MT DS telescope.

White light image of today's sun showing sunspots and H-alpha images showing more details and prominences. Caught between clouds.

Image of the full moon on Jan. 2, 2026 taken with a Redcat 71 telescope.

Last night's "Supermoon" aka "Wolf Moon". The moon is at perigee, closer to earth, so it appears about 14% larger than when it is at apogee.🧪

Glad to help!

The moon on Jan. 1, 2026. Two days before full.

My first lunar image of 2026. 🧪

Arkham Asylum?

Espresso uses very finely ground coffee extracted under pressure. French Press is the exact opposite: coarsely ground coffee is extracted with hot water without the pressure. The different extraction methods have a huge influence on the final composition.

That's certainly true. The extraction conditions are very different. There are also less-volatile compounds extracted in the coffee in addition to the volatile aroma compounds. Although these chromatograms only address the aroma, the labeled compounds play a strong role in the flavor, too.

They’re quite different! I prefer the Sumatra for espresso and lattes, but the Colombian is amazing as drip coffee or French Press.

Click on the images to see the full chromatograms.

GCxGC-MS chromatogram of volatile aroma compounds from a Sumatra French Roast coffee. The aroma is dominated by roasted, caramel, and spicy phenolic notes. Pyridine smells terrible in large quantities, but it is present at low levels in roasted coffee and doesn't smell bad at those levels.

GCxGC-MS chromatogram of a Colombian coffee with a very different aroma profile than the Sumatran coffee. The trace acetic acid actually gives this coffee a bright, almost citrusy aroma.

After a late night, there's nothing like a cup of coffee. Here are annotated GCxGC-MS chromatograms for the aroma compounds in two very different coffees from my local roasters.🧪

💥 🍃 🧪 Nature's Best Science Images of 2025

Christmas Tree nebula, colored in green.

It's at an angle in the widefield image. Here's a zoomed image from my small telescope, recolored in green.

Full solar disk with sunspots

White-light image of Dec. 31 2025 sun

Full solar disk, H-alpha

Zoomed view of solar prominence

Zoomed view of solar prominence

Zoomed view of sunspots

Brief gap between clouds gave me my last solar images of 2025. Not great seeing conditions, but still interesting to see the solar activity! 🧪