I’ve been getting a lot of questions about why I left the USA. I suppose it’s time I come clean. A couple months ago, I decided to photograph the moon deep in infrared light and saw something that caught my eye. 1/ I shared my findings with select high-profile astronomers who advised me to keep my findings a secret until they could understand exactly what they were looking at. A few days passed 2/

I modified one of my telescopes to be able to look at the sun.

This is what it's looking at right now: The sun's incredibly dynamic atmosphere.

DO NOT attempt to do this unless you know what you're doing, you could easily blind yourself. Here's some background on how I learned to do this:

Side note- today's captures are part of an ongoing project I'll be sharing with you soon!cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-ab…

In 2019 this photo of the moon changed my life. I went from a nobody to Andrew McCarthy: astrophotographer. Thank you for supporting me back then for liking and and sharing it!

Anyways, here’s a mobile wallpaper of the image because I love you. Feel free to download and save as a device background! Meanwhile, if you want to be sure these show up in your feed make sure to engage in the post somehow so the algorithm knows to show you the next ones!

I’m frequently asked why I’m able to photograph galaxies in detail when they’re so far away, when photographing things that are closer like satellites and planets is so difficult. You’d think capturing a planet shot would be easier than this, right? Each object represents a different challenge: planets are much closer to us, yes.. but in a cosmic sense, they’re quite small. Compare these photos of Mars: you can see in context against the moon just how small it is in the sky.

My last image of the international space station brought a lot of "interesting" conversations to the thread say the least. Everything from the moon is a hologram to I'm paid by NASA to fake these images. Here's a short thread about my take on these ideas. First of all, here's the thread if you missed it. Some great context for how I captured this image as well as some great entertainment in the replies:

https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1662116863181197313?s=20

One of the most difficult shots I've ever attempted, here is the @Space_Station captured in broad daylight as it transited the waxing crescent moon. Captured using two telescopes in tandem, This is the most detailed transit shot I've ever achieved of the ISS. The full shot makes it feel like the ISS is orbiting the moon, making me yearn for the future when the Lunar Gateway is an occupied fixture in lunar orbit. With that in mind, I titled this piece "New Frontiers", available as a limited edition print here: cosmicbackground.io/pages/new-fron…

My recent video of the International Space Station drew a lot of questions, so before I release the image I captured I thought I would put together a thread describing exactly how you can capture a similar photo! 👇 If you're not interested in how to do it and just want to know when I'm dropping my new image of the station (I personally think it's one of my best but I'll let you decide) you can see it early by either subscribing to me on twitter or on my website: cosmicbackground.io

Yesterday I captured a quite tricky shot: The International Space Station transiting the waxing crescent moon during broad daylight. Here is the moment of the transit, slowed down to roughly 1/7th speed. I captured this transit using two cameras and two telescopes operating simultaneously at around 250fps, and even so the ISS was only in frame for a handful of shots. To learn more about how I do these, I wrote up a brief tutorial on my website: cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-ab…

I heard someone recently say the international space station doesn't exist. Rather than argue with them, I thought I'd share a bit of knowledge. Did you know you can easily capture it yourself? There's apps that show you when it crosses the sky, but I find that's the hardest way to capture it. If you wait until it passes in front of the moon, you can easily capture its shape! To do this, I use the website transit-finder.com

On Friday, the sun put on a dazzling show for us. My friend @TheVastReaches and I worked hard over the last 5 days to produce this incredibly detailed 140 megapixel image to illustrate how wonderfully dynamic and beautiful our star can be. Make sure you zoom in! @TheVastReaches A blend of science and art, this photo combined over 90,000 images meticulously layered and processed to reveal our star in a way you've never seen before. Pick it up in print here: cosmicbackground.io/products/fusio…

Friday I captured around 200k images of our sun. I asked my friend @TheVastReaches for help working all the data so we could create an incredibly detailed image of our star, and we're nearly done. Take a look at this close crop of the final 140 MP pic we'll be sharing tomorrow: This will be by far my most detailed sun picture when we're done working on it, and features a solar prominence (that tornado looking thing) that's over 100,000 miles tall. As always, patrons will get an early look at the final full size image. patreon.com/ajamesmccarthy

More validation this comet is breaking apart- these are individual exposures captured about 5 minutes apart. Not only does it appear to have multiple cores, but they all seem to be moving relative to each other. Context:

https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1620996910298587136?s=20&t=RPjJYWtfW34I0W6mLms2CQ

I frequently get people asking why none of my photos have satellites in them (except the ISS photos I share). Well, that's because they get stacked out. In a single raw frame, like this one, There are plenty of satellites, visible as thin streaks of light as they pass through. Right after dusk the problem is the worst, as the bright satellites in low Earth orbit are still in direct sunlight. Higher altitude satellites (like geosynchronous ones) are in virtually perpetual sunlight. It's particularly an issue along the equatorial plane.

The light from these galaxies colliding was emitted 23 MILLION years ago, and then travelled across intergalactic space only to be caught by my telescope 3 feet before hitting the ground. I get an existential crisis when I think too much about the mechanics of my hobby. This image was actually captured in early 2020. When I captured it back then I didn't know as much about processing the raw data, so as you can see my initial edit is not as detailed. The same data produces much better results if managed properly.

Last night I captured an incredibly difficult shot: ISS transiting the moon, while gently kissing Tycho crater as it flies by at 5 miles per second. That crater is 53 miles wide, so while the station almost looks like it's orbiting the moon it's actually 1000x closer to us. This is the full image. The field of view of capture was quite narrow, so the rest of the moon was assembled as a mosaic. That creates a super detailed image without sacrificing the composition. You can pick this up in print here: cosmicbackground.io/products/a-vis…

Yesterday I spent hours capturing this: an intricately detailed photo of the sun shot using a specially modified telescope. Here it is in the full 164 Megapixels, so you can zoom into every nitty gritty detail. That sunspot group on the top is currently pointed right at Earth! While I did release this image for print, I realize many of you are still shopping for others today. So I released a gift card on my website as the perfect last-minute gift for the space lover in your life. Get it here: cosmicbackground.io/products/cosmi…

Happening right now: This is the Total Lunar Eclipse- visible over all of North America as I type this. I'm shooting pictures of it all night so I'll share them here as soon as I can. This was captured less than an hour ago and processed in a rush. I’ll have prints up sometime tomorrow for my shots so be sure to get on my mailing list if you aren’t already! cosmicbackground.io

The most rushed shot I've ever captured in my life. A @SpaceX rocket just flew over my backyard. It was moving so fast I barely had time to grab a camera. This might be one of my favorite shots of all time, and it's a miracle it's in focus. This was shot with a telescope handheld (no time to attach to a tripod). I should really start paying attention to launch schedules so I can actually do this properly. I had to crank up my ISO so it's much noisier than I would have liked.

I've been shooting Jupiter almost every night for the last 6 weeks. Here's the timelapse I was able to create by aligning all the shots where the Great Red Spot was centered. This was a ton of work, so I'm thrilled it turned out this good despite constantly changing conditions The purpose of this was to observe how the storms on Jupiter moved, something not possible from a single photo but evident after multiple nights of observing. It's also a tribute to the Voyager 1 1979 Jupiter flyby (except mine has color)

Thanks IGN, but while this was “my” clearest pic at the time, there’s definitely FAR better ones taken by peers, let alone the space telescopes and probes that have produced incredible up close shots.

https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1575214018796699656

Some Earth-Based astrophotographers that produce much clearer planetary work than I, some of whom don't get nearly the recognition they deserve:

Matt Smith @AstroNameHere (same exact telescope as me)

https://twitter.com/AstroNameHere/status/1574579175041531904?s=20&t=GBe12x_qPhHDvqVoGW0Z5Q

After staying up all night shooting it, here's my shot of Jupiter at "Opposition". This is the closest its been to Earth in 59 years. Since I was shooting it for hours, I captured a significant amount of Jupiter's rotation. You can see the great red spot transit the face of the planet. That's a storm that larger than Earth!