Metablog Update #15 - A Busy Year with Much Progress!
October 22, 2025
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A Belated MetaBlog
My last MetaBlog post was done just after the turn of the year. I had intended to do another update mid-year. Well, given that the leaves are coming down and Halloween is just around the corner, I guess I missed that milestone by a country mile! So here we are - better late than never!
There is much to talk about, so let’s Get Started!
The Observatory Project - Lost in the Desert for the Last Two Years
To pursue my astrophotography ambitions, I needed an observatory and a site with better sky access.
The search, move, build, and commissioning phases took the better part of two years and severely constrained my imaging.
As of May, the facility is operational. Automation is largely complete, capture is simpler, and I’m making productive use of marginal nights.
Explore the full build log on the Whispering Skies Observatory page.
It's been a long road, but I think all of the effort was worth it, and I am pleased to be able to image again!
Below you can see the new posts covering the observatory construction since my last Metablog post:
Having the observatory is everything I hoped it could be! I have things tuned in now, and much of my automation is complete. It has never been easier to capture data or go after those marginal nights that I might have skipped in the past!
The Fourth Pier
My plans always called for four piers in the observatory. But I only had three telescopes. So the search began for the scope that would go on the 4th Pier. I wanted a ‘galaxy’ scope. In my last Metablog, I started considering what requirements I should have for this scope.
I spent a lot of time thinking about this. But I finally came up with my requirements and began to analyze the best way forward. I chose the following configuration:
Sharpstar SCA260 V2 Scope
ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro Camera and 36mm unmounted filter wheel
IOptron CEM70 Mount
ZWO OAG-L guider
ZWO ASI174Mini guide camera.
You can see my posts about this analysis and the configuration I did to put the scope in operation.
I am still learning to use this scope for imaging, but you can see some of my early results below.
My Most Recent Imaging Projects
It has been great collecting photons once again, and I have been hard at work completing imaging projects and posting my results!
The observatory has enabled me to utilize many more nights and partial nights, resulting in increased average integration times. In the past, I was lucky to capture 10 hours. Now, I seem to be averaging around 18!
Here is a summary of the images I have shot so far this year (four more are currently in process!):
Image Honors/Recognition
Some of my images have received attention in a variety of ways. It's always nice when your work is recognized, and I thought I would summarize some of that here.
Published Images
As of this writing, I have completed 16 imaging projects for the year. Several of these have been published in one form or another, so here is where I stand with images that have been published so far this year!
BBC Sky At Night - October 2025
Published my image of SH2-54, The Serpent Nebula
The imaging project post can be viewed HERE.
BBC Sky At Night - October 2025
Published my image of Markarian’s Chain!
The imaging project post can be viewed HERE.
Astrobin Top Pick Nomination
Astrobin.com is an international website that allows astrophtographers to share their images and interact with one another. It is an amazing site and a resource that I use and depend on.
New images can be submitted as candidates for various image distinctions and honors. These include
Top Pick Nomination - Judged by a committee to be shortlisted for the Top Pick Award
Top Pick - Highlighted by the judging committee
Image of the Day - the best of all of the Top Picks for a given day - a real honor!
AstroBin’s blind-judged awards are competitive. This year, IC 5068 — The Forsaken Nebula earned a Top Pick Nomination, missing Top Pick by a single vote.
That near-miss is good motivation to keep pushing technique and integration depth.
IC 5068 The Forsaken Nebula
I was very surprised by this image - it was one of the most unusual targets that I have imaged, and the foreground veil of inky dark nebula really stands out due to its sharpness and detail. This is an image that has to be viewed on a large screen to be fully appreciated.
Missing Top Pick by one vote, just drives me to work even harder to up my game!
A Cycling Jersey!
A while back, I received an interesting request.
ASSOS of Switzerland, a cycling clothing company, and its USA branch were working with the Southern California Velo cycling club to create a custom cycling Jersey. They were wondering if I would permit them to use my image of Messier 16 - the Eagle Nebula for this Jersey.
This image of Messier 16 - The Eagle Nebula, was a good choice for a custom cycling jersey
This has always been my favorite image of this impressive target, and I thought the blue colors from the SHO Pallete would look great on a jersey.
So, of course, I gave my permission, and we went back and forth on how the design would be used. The jersey came out and looked amazing. They sent me a complimentary jersey, which I have now framed and hung in my observatory.
And here is the Jersey:
The Final Jersey - I think the colors look great!
And in use by the cycling club!
Club Members sporting a great looking Jersey (used with permission)
The president of the club! (used with permission)
Mounted in a Jersey Display Frame!
Hung in observatory!
Another view!
Here is a link to the club’s website talking about the jersey!
https://www.sc-velo.com/blog/3knmvc4ymwtuz3mzwbma9agqcvntyy
Referenced in a Scientific Paper!
I never could have imagined that one of my images would be referenced in a formal scientific paper, but this actually just happened!
I was contacted by Alexa Friederich Hidalgo, who is a master's student in astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy (UNAM, Mexico).
She was currently preparing a scientific article on the planetary nebula Abell 71, which is being submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).
She was asking permission to use or at least reference my image of SH2-115 and Abell 71.
SH2-115 - Abell 71 can be seen in the upper right corner.
I was happy to give permission for this and asked that she contact me once the article was printed.
A while later, she got back to me with a link to the article - my image is mentioned in the last paragraph of Section 4.2, and is also listed in the reference section:
Tracing the ISM–PN interaction: a morphokinematic study of Abell 71
The abstract of the article.
How cool is that!! It’s always interesting to me to learn more about what I have captured in my images. This article goes into some depth and was a great read!
Rochester Museum and Science Center Display
I am a member of AS-RAS (The Astronomy Section of the Rochester Academy of Science), and we have a relationship with the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC).
They have been preparing for a major new "Astronaut" exhibit, and as part of this, they wanted to decorate some large columns in the Museum’s Cafe with space images.
They reviewed images printed in our AS-RAS newsletter and selected several that they were interested in using. One of the images was my Image of NGC 7822 - The Central Portion of the Question Mark Nebula.
My image of NGC 7822 - The Question Mark Nebula.
They reached out and asked permission to use this image, and I was happy to agree.
They now call these columns the Astro Pillars, and this past Thursday, October 16th, the new exhibit launched. As part of this, the Astro Pillars were also unveiled.
Here is a poster on the wall near the pillars describing the selected images. As you can see, they've selected a fantastic set of images from talented individuals in AS-RAS!
The poster describing the image printed on the various columns (photo curtesy of Kevin Lyons)
And here are a couple of shots showing the pillar with my image.
One view of the column with my image (photo courtesy of Kevin Lyons)
Another view (photo courtesy of Kevin Lyons)
It was an honor to have my image chosen and to have it be on display in the museum.
Presentations
I spent a huge amount of time this year working on the observatory, and once it was operational, I actually started doing imaging. Due to limited free time, I was not taking on any invitations to speak. However, I did end up doing one talk.
I was invited to do a talk for the St. Albans Camera Club in the UK on the topic of Astrophotography and what it takes to make great images.
I found that angle interesting, so I agreed to put together my take on this. I worked on it during a visit to my son and his family in North Carolina. Since I could neither work on the observatory nor on imaging, it was a great time to pull my thoughts together.
I did the Zoom presentation on May 13. They recorded the video, and I edited it and posted the result to my YouTube Channel:
Technical Articles
While everything else was going on this year, I did have a chance to publish two technical articles. One dealt with the overcorrection of Flats, and the other with the Weather System I chose for my Observatory. You can see those here:
Website Status
In the past, I have shared numerous statistics on the website's traffic volume. I won't be doing that today, and I'm unsure how many people are interested in that type of data.
I will say that traffic has increased year-on-year, and some of this growth is from Internet searches, where CosgrovesCosmos.com comes up in the search results much more often than in the past.
I am still gratified to see that visitors are still coming from all over the world to visit the site.
Improving the Site
Over the past year, I have started to slowly update the website.
I wanted to touch base briefly on some changes you may have noticed.
Menu Cleanup
I cleaned up the menu structure a bit so it seemed to make more sense (I hope!)
Resource Page Expansion
I did a major expansion of the Resource Page. I am quite proud of the useful information that I was able to curate here. Please take a moment to explore this a bit. You can see it HERE. As always, please let me know if you run into any dead links or if you have a suggestion for another links that you think should be added!
My massive resource list….
Restructuring of the Image Gallery
In the past, the main image gallery displayed all my completed imaging projects.
I then offered a long list of menu items that showed you filtered views: by year, by telescope, by type, etc. This meant that when you selected that menu option, a lengthy and unappealing list was displayed.
I wanted to simplify this. I purchased a plug-in module that enables me to display filtered views of the image gallery. You now have access to the full gallery, with the next menu item providing a view that includes a selector and search boxes at the top. This allows you to create narrower views. Want to see all of the images taken in 2022 on the Williams Optics Telescope? Now you can. Want to see just pictures of galaxies? Now you can. I save a lot of metadata for each imaging project (these are the keywords you see listed under the bottom of each image thumbnail), and you can also do a free-form search for any of those. As the image gallery grows, this should provide a big help in searching and navigating across the image collection.
The new Filtered View Page!
Dedicated Processing Pages
I'm proud to be one of the few websites offering a detailed processing walkthrough for most images, all without a paywall!
However, one downside was that the image project posts were becoming quite lengthy and could take a while to load.
Starting with my last imaging project, I now have dedicated image processing pages. You can read about a project in the main post as you always have - but then you can follow a link that takes you to a second page that is dedicated to telling the processing story. This should make load time much faster.
The link to the dedicated processing section.
“What’s New” Scrollable List on the home page
I’ve always had a “What’s New” link on my home page. This will take you to a long page that lists each new post as it is made on the website. Now I have a small scrollable window on the home page which allows me to see the most recent changes and click on those to go to these new posts.
The new scrolling “What’s New” view on the home page.
Wrap-Up
That’s where things stand today!
I still have some pending projects for the observatory, including the cabinets and countertops for the North Wall, and a Gallery section for the West wall. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, I hope to get more images done before the enevidible cloud deck moves in November!
Clear Skies,
Pat
