On one of the most beautiful nights I’ve had in my backyard I was able to get the best animation of Jupiter!

My first good attempt at the great red spot this year. Seeing wasn’t perfect, but it was a nice evening in the backyard!

Testing out my new barlow lens I was able to get my clearest results of Jupiter and Saturn yet!

I woke up in the middle of the night to see my first glimpse of Jupiter and Saturn in 2021!

Tonight I discovered my camera has a high speed mode to capture even more frames, and I was able to get my best ISS image yet!

Tonight I tried to photograph the ring nebula for the first time, not an easy task with an untracked mount!

I went outside to enjoy the beautiful evening with no real targets in mind. I ended up seeing some stunning views of the moon and some hints of the ring nebula.

I tried to photograph the M5 globular cluster. I like this image but I definitely learned some things I would do next time to do even better!

Tonight both the ISS and Tianhe-1 had really high passes at reasonable times! The night was clear, but seeing wasn’t absolutely perfect. Even with imperfect conditions I got good shots of both stations.

I took my first shot at imaging the Chinese space station Tianhe-1. It’s probably the smallest target I’ve been able to resolve!

Very possibly my sharpest image of the moon yet

I took one last shot at Orion before it’s gone for the season. My practice back in March really paid off and I got an image I’m really happy with!

I had a beautiful 85 degree pass of the space station, though less than optimal seeing stopped the image from being really incredible

I tried out a couple ideas to get noticeably sharper images of the moon. I’m pretty pleased with the results!

It’s always hard to pass up a nice ISS pass when the weather is clear, the pass is in the evening, and the kids are in bed!

I photographed XM-3 and XM-5 geostationary satellites all night to see how they move and to watch them disappear into the shadow of the Earth.

I tried to photograph the geostationary satellite eclipse but my computer was shut down by a windows update! I’ll try again another night, but I still got some great views of XM-3 and XM-5!

Trying out a new focal reducer I used the Orion nebula as a test subject and wow, it worked so much better than I expected!

After a cloudy and snowy winter I finally get a clear night to do some star trails. They don’t turn out great, but it feels good to get back outside again.

BBC Sky at Night Magazine is hosting the 2021 Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards, so I thought I might as well submit a few images. These are what I chose!