November lightning. North Phoenix Wednesday night. I'll take it. Needs terrain. #azwx #weatherphotography

I wasn't in Phoenix for storms yesterday, but that changed in a snap after heading outdoors & seeing constant lightning over tops of buildings and a coherent cell on radar. Really glad to find this handy patch of unbuilt desert nearby to watch it move in. #weatherphotography #azwx

Another from last night when finer detail was erupting behind the Peaks. It was absolutely on fire at that point. Vertical geometry corrected this time to better show how the pillars splayed outward toward the edges instead of all being parallel straight up. #northernlights #nightscape

A slice of what we got over the San Francisco Peaks and Mt. Elden from Buffalo Park, Flagstaff tonight around 9:45PM/0445Z. I really struggled to process this one. I am also tired. The brighter yellow-orange pillars appeared white-ish to my eye as it was happening. #astrophotography #auroraborealis

Imaging comet Lemmon on October 23rd. I was planning to focus stack the sky with the astro rig as it was shooting the comet. But then kind of preferred the soft focus sky with all the star color and Corona Borealis arcing beautifully at upper right. So indecisively posting both:) #astrophotography

That one time back in April, giving Tennessee storm chasing a shot. Try as one may to stick to farmland in the delta, the better storms are going to go where they want. Which means trees & highway overpasses. Glad to have experienced that, but not high on my wish-to-revisit list. #weatherphotography

C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) from last night. It is a really good telescopic target right now! Lots more detail throughout the tail but especially close to the coma with streamers fanning out inside the dust tail. Interesting to see the turquoise coma breezing off to the right a bit too. #astrophotography

C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) with Arcturus blazing just above the horizon tonight. Naked eye, roughly 2° of the tail was visible compared to 5° in 15x70 binoculars and more like 8° in this shot. The heavy airglow was visible naked eye too as the comet dipped deeper into it. #astrophotography #comet

An abrupt tail disconnect with comet Lemmon Friday night. Almost didn't catch it in time to get in frame. The tail is streaming away fast. Frame by frame you can watch all of that breezing away from the comet 3-4 times faster than the comet is orbiting off to the left. #astrophtography #comet

Wide view of C/2025 R2 SWAN, M16, M17 and M24 dunking into the San Francisco Peaks and airglow Friday night. A bit of fall color showing up on those hills...along with a bright pumice mine. #astrophotography #comet

Two swans and an eagle. Comet SWAN—C/2025 R2—is drifting through the Milky Way now. Last night it drifted by M16/the Eagle Nebula and M17/the Swan Nebula. Lots of love already for comet colors, but that bumps up a few notches when a bright nebula or two are nearby. #astrophotography #comet

Once the last bit of twilight is gone, you might think, aha, maximum contrast! But then the blazing airglow says, aha, no! Tail shows up better at this point, but can’t pull it out any further with all the intervening ripples. Even with that, I still like what airglow does for a scene.

C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) at the beginning of astronomical twilight tonight. I could just barely make it out naked eye as a soft spot above left of Cor Caroli. I'm biding my time a bit on processing the telescopic shots, but it looks like there was a cool tail disconnect in progress. #astrophotography

I need to shoot twilight starscapes more often—not just when comets are trying to hide within. Can you spot it? Second pic points the way. C/2025 R2 (SWAN) Thursday evening. Not an obvious one like NEOWISE or Tsuchinshan-ATLAS recently. But I do have hopes for Lemmon soon. #comet #astrophotography

And then there's the other bright comet, C/2025 R2 (SWAN). Nice that it's an evening object, but it's still in heavy twilight + gibbous moon + horizon loving clouds. So definitely not as detailed as Lemmon the morning before. 1.5° tail looks yellowish—so maybe dust, not ion. #comet #astrophotography

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) from wayyy too early Thursday morning with all the good comet colors in the coma, dust & ion tails—with that stretching 6° in the uncropped original. It should keep getting better over the next few weeks and finally make it's way to the evening sky. A more tolerable place.

West of Flagstaff this afternoon. The search for structure worked out reasonably well. Better at times than this, but the CG demanded this moment be highlighted. #weatherphotography #stormchasing #azwx

I’d say this tour group got their money’s worth! I had planned to be driving home that day, but forecast instability & boundary options convinced me to hang around another day. SPC wasn’t too impressed though until 20Z as things started happening. May 1, 2025, Briggs, TX. #stormchasing

Coming up Friday night and really looking forward to it! 5:30PM, September 19th, from Flagstaff, AZ, the first International Dark Sky City. Workshop at the Astrogeology Science Center with a field session afterward just down the road in Buffalo Park. www.eventbrite.com/e/night-sky-...

Not enough time to haul off to a spot with a lower horizon, but the brief aurora display still lofted the tree tops at the end of astronomical twilight. East side of Flagstaff 35°N. 8:04 PM MST/0304Z. #northernlights #nightscape

Zodiacal Light blazing among the cinder cones north of Flagstaff. I love the depth showing up in scenes like this. Beyond the foreground lie ripples of airglow, further out the dust of our solar system slicing through and enveloping Jupiter & Venus, all atop a Milky Way backdrop. #nightscape

Fallen, snaggy tree and Flagstaff lights catching the Milky Way with SP Crater peeking in from the right. The camera had to almost get in the dirt for this one. #nightscape #astrophotography

Arizona locals interested in learning to photograph the night sky—there’s a little something happening in Flagstaff, Friday, September 19th. I’ll be leading a night photography workshop at the Astrogeology Science Center, with a field session in Buffalo Park right after. Link below: bit.ly/3UDqpWh

Occlusion approaching Hwy62/70 west of Matador, Texas on April 24th. It was moving slightly left to right from this spot, but not fast enough for my liking, so I drifted back west after this shot & got a view of nothing but rain as it crossed the road. #weatherphotography #stormchasing

I scouted unpaved roads south of Winslow looking for a decommissioned bridge Sunday night but got diverted by unexpected fences & gates. Along the way, some weathered sandstone outcrops kindly showed up and filled in while Payson tried to keep the Milky Way from touching the horizon. #milkyway

Storms got stingy with CGs after crossing the Bradshaws Friday night. Just enough IC flashes to keep one hopeful. Looking west over Dewey as the gust front moved in. #stormchasing #weatherphotography

Looking SW across Lake Mary yesterday evening. This was an interesting catch. The shutter was set to high-speed continuous. When the trigger fired, the right strike captured first, followed 1/12 sec later by the one on the left. I stacked both since they were buddies. #azwx #weatherphotography

Paper wasp scrambling in the back yard. I had an experimental truce with them this year since they don’t menace like yellow jackets & wow they kept the grasshopper swarms in check. Need to patch holes in the new retaining wall this winter so they don’t get overly entrenched. #macrophotography

June 7th last year, midway between Dunning & Arnold, Nebraska, as a tour group tries to catch a meso by the tail. #weatherphotography #stormchasing

Percy has a bust along the Pluto Walk at Lowell Observatory. Red uplighting is kind of ominous though.

On the other side of a key decision here. April 24, NW of Matador, TX looking North. Storm is wrapping up, rotating faster & moving in. Untested dirt grid to the right/east would keep close but require zigzagging in the path. Opted nope. U-turned just as this 1st dusty spinup lofted. #stormchasing

The Cassiopeia Milky Way has some interesting goodies embedded. Canon sensors read just enough deep red to hint at the emission nebulae scattered around…besides all the open clusters. 51 minutes tracked at f/4.0. #milkyway #astrophotography

Found a spot to pour the Milky Way into a snaggled goblet while air glow splashed everywhere. A couple weeks ago north of Flagstaff. #milkyway #nightscape

Maybenado/probably-wallcloud the night of April 27-28, 0259Z, N of Mullen, NE. NWS damage survey plots a tornado there at that time, but w/the ridge in the way, can’t tell if those are wedge-edges or just the wall cloud/collar cloud. Anyway, Cherry County—great storms/sketchy views. #stormchasing

Star trails over SP Crater. I set up south of the volcano this time to center up Polaris. It’s been a long time since messing with star trails—but might want to try these some more. It’s just that you have to commit multiple hours to a single composition rather than playing with multiple options.

I had to put some distance on this storm to be able to see anything, as much dust as it was ingesting. Southeast of Fort Stockton, April 22nd. #weatherphotography #stormchasing

‘Nader in the mist, roping away inside a glowing occlusion near Oakalla, Texas, May 1st. I heard tales of a 3rd tornado on this storm and not sure if this is what was being counted, but I figured this was just a recondensation of the original one after it feathered out for a bit. #tornado

While driving away from a night shot location north of Flagstaff, the Milky Way started lining up nicely with SP Crater. It’s a pretty impressive sight on satellite and aerial views with its striking lava flow. But has a great profile at ground level too. #milkyway #nightscape #volcanoes

Any ambitions to pursue nocturnal storms this season have been scoured away by the dry southwest winds of monsoonal failure. Thank goodness for memories of better times. August 9, 2023 from Twin Arrows.

It’s about time for the hawk moths to return. We don’t have as many Evening Primrose as last year. But still enough we should get some twilight visitors. #pollinators

One of my favorite views at Lowell Observatory. The Clark Telescope Dome broke ground in 1894 and still houses the 24” refractor Percival Lowell used to pursue a keen interest in Martian canals. It’s also known for the discovery of galactic redshift and creation of Lunar maps for Apollo missions.

At Lowell Observatory a couple nights ago scouting options for a night photography workshop in a few weeks. The Slipher Rotunda is a beautiful building. Porch lights a touch brighter/whiter than I recall, but these are the things that add delightful spices to the processing flow. #nightscape

One of our backyard ants scouting a hollyhock stem. They can’t stop moving—I don’t know how anyone can get a decent focus stack of these characters. Also interesting to see the fibers on that stem. Made me all kinds of itchy last weekend digging around in those to fix irrigation. #macrophotography

Wednesday night while shooting the Milky Way, I kept turning to see the glow of the Dragon Bravo Fire on the GC North Rim, 50 miles away. The wind got gustier after sundown and I’m sure really aggravated it, but it finally started to lay low for the night as temps cooled. #nightscape #wildfire

From the depths of the San Francisco Volcanic field last night—clear, dark skies & gnarly old junipers. The cinder cones nack there don’t even have names, far as I can tell. Solpugids & velvet ants spooked me while I was shooting. And I spooked a coyote on the way out. Balance. #nightscape #milkyway

Goodness the monsoon is hosed this year. I can’t overly complain because this side of town has gotten decent cumulative rain, but it just feels like a ‘lucky break’ in the larger scheme. And I haven’t studied the pattern closely enough to fully appreciate the current fail modes.

Surfing nocturnal QLCSes generally falls in bleh territory, but I was way out in Dixie & trying to squeeze the most out of everything. Near 1-2am, this one started twirling up mesovortices & tornado warnings. Pictured: powerflashnado knocking down lines near Wynne, AR—April 5th. #stormchasing #arwx

Great chalice shaped updraft with a tall, green vault south of Littlefield, Texas, April 25th. #weatherphotography #stormchasing

While up behind the Peaks Thursday snagging shots to the south, I noticed the western sky stayed bright well after astronomical twilight & figured there must be a load of airglow. So decided to finish the night with the Big Dipper and some high-crowned ponderosas on a green sky. #nightscape

While trying a different composition Thurs. night, a raft of clouds started to crest the Peaks & catch Flagstaff's lights. Decided to roll with it. I don't do as much light painting these days but opted to reflect my phone's light off the palm of my hand to help the foreground. #milkyway #nightscape