Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On The Road – ?BillinGlendaleCA – Orion

On The Road – ?BillinGlendaleCA – Orion

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On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

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Welcome to the new On The Road! It’s been a long time coming, and I’m excited that we’re back.

I’m still deep in the moving/unpacking process. To explain the long time this is taking – I’m moving two houses (my mother’s and mine) into my newly-purchased home. And my house has 1.5 houses worth of stuff from our inability to throw things away combined with my mother-in-law’s stuff we inherited. So it’s not as simple as “put everything in a box” – in some cases, we have three, even four, of an item, but they aren’t together. So as we pack things or reveal things to be packed, we often have to put an item aside until we can get to the other house to group similar items.

Coincidentally, I now live right near a feature called Red Rocks.

And now onto Bill!

I’ve made a couple of trips up to Red Rock to take advantage of it’s dark skies this past month. The first trip I concentrated on the Orion nebula, a wide shot of the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies, and a wide shot of the Orion nebula complex. I was quite unhappy with the later and returned to reshoot it(with a wider 30mm lens). I also wanted to shoot a narrow shot of the Triangulum galaxy but the battery on my sky tracker ran out of juice. On the way back though Mojave the CHP had blocked off the road for a truck carrying a very long, eh, something to the Mojave Spaceport.

Technical Note: The two Orion photos have the notation “LRGB Processing”, this method of processing a photo separates the luminosity and the color in a photo and processes them separately.

On The Road - ?BillinGlendaleCA - Orion 3
Red Rock Canyon State Park, CANovember 5, 2019

Star Trails at the Red Cliffs.

When I shoot at a place with an interesting foreground, I’ll set up one camera and shoot star trails. They’re easy to shoot and due to the relative lack of air traffic at Red Rock, easy to process as well.

On The Road - ?BillinGlendaleCA - Orion 2
Red Rock Canyon State Park, CANovember 5, 2019

Orion Nebula Complex(LRGB processing)

The area in and around the Orion constilation contain a large number of nebula. The Great Orion nebula shines brightly to the right of center. On each side of the bottom star in Orion’s belt are the Flame Nebula and the Horsehead Nebula. Surrounding these nebula and reaching to blue Rigel is Barnards Loop. Above Rigel is the faint Witchhead Nebula. At the bottom left is the Cone Nebula and Rosette Nebula.

On The Road - ?BillinGlendaleCA - Orion 1
Red Rock Canyon State Park, CAOctober 26, 2019

Great Orion Nebula and Running Man Nebula(LRGB processing)

I’ve posted pictures of the Great Orion nebula that I’ve shot here in town, Red Rock is a dark place and more detail is visible up there. There’s a bit of pattern noise that showed up at the bottom, I’ve since figured a way to remedy that. I’ve added in a meteor that was caught in one of the first exposures, you can see it(it’s the green line at the bottom left).

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  3. 3.

    JPL

    Bill, Your pictures are beautiful and thank you for submitting them.   Great way to welcome back the on the road segment.

  6. 6.

    TupeloPhoney

    Red Rocks or Red Rock?  Afaik Red Rock is a town in AZ, and also a geographic feature and park in NM not particularly close to the AZ town or similarly-named smaller parks.

    Red Rocks plural is, to my knowledge, a geographic feature used as a concert venue near Denver CO.

    Anyway congrats on the move to either beautiful area, and thanks for posting the fantastic pix!

  7. 7.

    TupeloPhoney

    @TupeloPhoney: since reference is made to Red Cliffs, I guessed we are talking about NM, but I see on review we are actually in California.  I guess there are alot of red rocks of various sizes all over the place.

  9. 9.

    satby

    All the photos are awesome! Bill’s are fantastic as usual, but loving all the Badger and bird pictures too. Bill, will any of these new star trail pics be for sale? Great gift ideas for the nature lovers in my life.

  10. 10.

    Matt McIrvin

    From 538’s article on Buttigieg:

    “I feel he’s well positioned,” Gaucher said. “The country is ready for a more gentle approach.” Williamson said she liked Biden, but felt he was too old. As for Warren? “When I hear her talk, I want to slap her, even if I agree with her,” she said.

    There will never be a woman President because there can never be a President with a woman’s voice. Not even women will allow this.

  15. 15.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    Those are (I think) comments successfully trapped by the spam filter but not removed from the “Recent Comments” list. The ones I have seen all refer to the old thread “This Life Ain’t Good Enough.” Reported to WaterGirl and kicked upstairs for remediation.

    Note: The nyms have hyperlinks associated with them. The ones I looked at seem to be dead, but I would not click on those!

  16. 16.

    satby

    @Matt McIrvin: True. I’m continually disappointed in my fellow women who bought the smears on Hillary, think Warren lectures at them, and don’t support Harris because she “can’t win”. And many men are worse, with snotty comments about women candidates vocal modulation.

     

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    At first I read “LRGB processing” as “LGBT processing”, and I wondered what gender/sexuality issues had to do with photography.

  23. 23.

    Sloane Ranger

    Wow, what great pictures! Thanks Bill.

     

    And hoping everything goes well for your new home Alain.

  24. 24.

    Amir Khalid

    I credit BillinGlendale’s star photography for awakening my interest in astrophysics and science videos on YouTube.

  25. 25.

    J R in WV

    Wow, BillinGlendale, busy as a beaver while On the Road was down!! Good job with all of this. Beautiful astrophotography work~!!~

     

    I see from the dates on the comments that this didn’t work at all the first week, and I thank the Webmasters of Balloon Juice for the work they and the Developers have done to fix complicated things like the handling of images. Also a good job! Thanks again.

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    Just so you all know, I am going to delete all the early comments by front-pagers last week when we could see this as a private post that regular commenters could not see.  The comments are no longer relevant and besides, who wants to take away from Bill’s lovely images and Alain’s first On the Road with the new form?

    Betty, please please add those wonderful pictures of Badger on another post. I ❤️ Badger.

  27. 27.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Amazing pix, Bill.  We drive past Red Rocks every time we visit the Eastern Sierra.  If we were more into desert climate we would probably use it as a regular camping destination, as it is really pretty.

  31. 31.

    Miss Bianca

    Billin, these are, as always, amazing.

     

    Best of luck to you, Alain, moving and sorting! Believe me, I feel your pain!

  37. 37.

    stinger

    Yay for the return of On the Road!

     

    BillinGlendaleCA, just astounding images as usual. Thank you for sharing.

     

    Alain, you have my sympathies.

  39. 39.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    I’m sorry that I was unable to reply to your comments in real time, I was working with lack of sleep from Saturday night(shooting star trails) and Sunday morning(IR at the Huntington) and ended up crashing just prior the post going up.

     

    I’m happy that y’all like the pictures, I could have gone with 5 or 8 shots, but this was a test post of the new system so I went with only 3.

    @Another Scott:  Thanks, I’m glad you enjoy the “first look”, there will be a set of IR photos from The Huntington up this afternoon/evening on my Patreon.

    @satby: I have shot 2 more star trails, one at Red Rock looking east and a test shot(shot the past Saturday night) of star trails over Downtown Los Angeles(I spent about 5 hours getting rid of aircraft trails).  As @AnotherScott noted, I post my shots as I shoot them at my Patreon.

    @Palindrome: Stars have color, but the reason that many star trails are white is that they are either shot in a area with light pollution or with a full moon that illuminates the foreground, but washes out the color in the stars.  If you shoot in a dark location(Red Rock is really dark) and don’t overexpose the shot, you will get stars with color.  I’m going to be shooting more urban and full moon star trails in the next few months(weather permitting).

  40. 40.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Amir Khalid: I think I may have done that a few times, LRGB stands for Luminosity, Red, Green, Blue(though I just use a combined color layer).

     

    @Amir Khalid: That makes me happy, I’m glad my pics encouraged you to explore the universe.  There are many wonderful things out there, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is an excellent place to see them.

     

    @UncleEbeneezer: The Mojave is the goto place for astrophotography, it’s pretty easy to find dark places out there and there’s some really good foreground elements.  I’d imagine the mountains would be good, but it’d require a hike to get to a good location.  The lure of Red Rock is that it’s under a 2 hour drive from LA and it’s really dark.

  41. 41.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: Even the Russian bots like my pics.

     

    @J R in WV: The wide Orion shot didn’t work as well as I’d hoped the first trip, I shot it at 50mm with the kit lens on my NX1(a really good lens), where a prime lens would be better.  That’s not to say the first trip out was a total fail, I shot a star trail to the east and a “wide” shot(50mm) of the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies.

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