In this Cocktail Blog I detail the total Armageddon wreaked on my astrophoto taking for saying the previous night that “it was boring it was so good”. You get a view from my shower and a preview of videos to come.
Yes, one more of these! In this episode I talk about boring astrophotography and how much I like it, my excursion to the Big Daddy sand dune, finding new targets to shoot and my tour guide’s unusual name!
This is the drone footage I was able to take on August 3rd and 4th from the &Beyond Desert Lodge in Namibia Africa. set to music. Spectacular views, and in 4k quality!
It’s cocktail blog time again, this time showing some of the great drone footage I was able to capture in my two-day “ok to fly the drone” window. I went on a little Land Rover Safari to the big sand dune on the property!
Here’s number eight in the Cocktail Blog series, I’m all alone here at this huge resort!
Globular Star Cluster Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) is by far the most impressive of all the globular star clusters.
In this video I show you the incredible guest cottages they have here at &Beyond, Namibia and I get to stay in one for a week! Plus the usual astrophoto talk about upcoming images like the “False Comet” in the tail of Scorpio.
Another in the series. I preview a couple images that will have their own blog posts later: my bucket list image of the Eta Carina Nebula, and the Cat’s Paw Nebula with the nearby NGC 6357. This thing needs a name, anybody got any ideas?
Eta Carinae Nebula, the Holy Grail of Southern Hemisphere astrophotography targets, finally bagged at last!
Video “Cocktail Blog” No. 5!
This is a “deep-dive” astrophotography post detailing the acquisition and processing methods of the first Astrophoto from the Namibia Trip.
Another Cocktail Blog where I ramble about what’s going on in a semi-coherent way. Sneak peek at my first completed astrophoto from Namibia!
A little journaling with a cocktail before dinner…
This post details the hop from Cape Town to Windhoek, the Namibian capital, and then the Land Rover ride to the resort to start the two month residency here.
It looks like my days here are going to settle in to a nice rhythm, a medley of relaxation and ‘work’. It's day number five here at the resort, Sunday, although I'm finding it harder and harder to keep track of what day it is because every day is about the same: perfect weather, perfect food, perfect sky and the unbelievable beauty of the Namib desert.
I woke up surprisingly early and went about trying to figure out the electricity in my room. They had told me the style of plugs that they use here, but there are two similar styles of plugs that are of slightly different dimensions and I of course had bought the wrong size; the prongs were just too close together to fit in the sockets here. So I looked around and found a power strip that had some alternate choices on it and was able to find one outlet that I could use to charge my phone, the watch or run a computer.
Tuesday, 23 July was the day I was supposed to arrive at the resort so I got up super early and enjoyed the a breakfast they serve complimentary at the hotel and made my way to the airport with six suitcases and two carry-ons for the short two hour flight from Cape Town to Windhoek Namibia, the capital city.
Video Blog No. 1
This is the video I produced covering the prep and first leg of the trip, up through my one day stay and tour I took of Cape Town.
It seemed like I was packing for a week to get ready for this trip! I took more than a month to prep and make sure I had everything I needed and then 4 days of packing stuff up into 7 different suitcases mostly filled with gear, and oh by the way, I should probably take some clothes as well!
Northern Nebulae
I was out in Phoenix visiting my family last Christmas and I thought it would be fun to do a video to music of some of the photos I’d been taking with the remote observatory over the past year. The detail in some of the photos is breathtaking thanks to the crisp, 6-inch refractor scope I have there.
For music I chose a bunch of pieces that I recorded in Cincinnati with my friend Ron Esposito who passed suddenly in 2023. His music, consisting of crystal singing bowls with various other musicians guesting on the various pieces make what I think is a perfect soundtrack to something like this.
So please enjoy “Northern Nebulae” and while you’re at it, hit that ‘Full-Screen” button!