On a recent trip to the Eastern Sierra, I was able to catch the changing of the leaves to vivid yellows and oranges:

Serendipitously, an early season snowstorm occurred halfway into the trip. It was amazing to see the vibrant foliage suddenly set against a beautiful white backdrop:

Setting aside foliage for a moment, here is the Milky Way above Hot Creek Geological Site. The comet I posted previously, C/2025 R2 SWAN, can be barely seen in the full-resolution version as a pale green dot to the lower right of the Milky Way. This was taken a few nights before the previous picture, when it was not yet coincident with the Eagle Nebula, which can be seen in the upper half of the Milky Way.

This is C/2025 R2 SWAN, a comet discovered using the SWAN instrument onboard the SOHO spacecraft, as it travels near the same region of sky as M 16, the Eagle Nebula:

Their proximity in the night sky shouldn’t be mistaken as real proxmity—​while the Eagle Nebula is roughly 5-6 thousand light-years away, C/2025 R2 SWAN is expected to come as close as 39 million km to Earth.

This summer, I was able to explore the Northern California and Southern Oregon coasts. Along the way, I hiked under the towering trees of Humboldt Redwoods State Park:

Witnessed a beautiful sunset at Pirate Cove:

And observed brown pelicans against crashing waves near the Smith River Passage:

Those were only a few of the many breathtaking sights though, so do check out the linked albums!

Singapore: hot, humid, utterly beautiful.

A city that comes alive at night.

A metropolis in a garden.

This is the Crescent Nebula (captured in OHS narrowband), adrift in the swirling waves of the Milky Way:

Though visible to the naked eye as a faint star, M 5 is a globular star cluster made up of over 100,000 stars:

Back to nebulae today. When you gaze into space, does the Iris Nebula gaze back at you?

There are two galaxy groups in today’s image, the first being the NGC 7331 Group, made up of the spiral galaxy NGC 7331 that dominates the center of the image, and smaller galaxies visually (though not spatially) near it. In the upper right is Stephan’s Quintet, another visual grouping of galaxies.

The focus today is on the Eagle Nebula, part of Sunday’s image, but this time rendered in OSH narrowband:

Just up and to the right of yesterday’s image is the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex, a celestial jewel box of differently-colored stars and nebulae: