CIRCLE WITH A DOT

I processed my Soul Nebula data from my Death Valley trip a couple of weeks ago. This is a big star formation region in Cassiopeia, 6,500 light years away.This is 116 two minute subs, shot with an astro modified Canon EOS R8 and an Askar 71f (490mm f/l) scope. I used NINA and a guide scope in the data acquisition too. The mount was an AM3N. The bulk of the processing was Siril, including Starnet++ and Cosmic Clarity, with a little more noise reduction help from Topaz.I think this could use some more data, so I’m in the “astrophotography is never done” phase of things. #astrophotography

@DavidPenington I wouldn’t say that the Pfizer covid vax has been killed — not yet, anyway.But by imposing new, large trial requirements for an annual strain revision for a given population subset, the FDA is doing its best to make up-to-date Covid vaccines uneconomical to produce. If they are successful, then that impacts vaccine access for everyone.But! FDA decisions are not set in stone. See for example the pending Moderna mRNA flu application, about which they originally said they wouldn’t even look at the application, promptly ate shit on, and then decided to review after all. Trump is only getting weaker, and therefore is more susceptible to pushback — before the midterms at least.https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/influenza-vaccines/double-reverse-fda-now-says-it-will-review-moderna-s-mrna-flu-vaccine

@cremevax I always bring my ballot to the drop box in town. I won’t mail it. And I do use that tracking feature. I don’t leave anything up to chance. This year, I’ll likely photocopy it before I send it, too.

@cremevax Pretty sure that's desert paintbrush.

This is very good to see in Washington State. ICE and other law enforcement officers hiding their identities are meant to terrorize the population, thwart public accountability and are fundamentally incompatible with democracy.https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2026/03/19/face-mask-ban-for-police-in-washington-is-signed-into-law/?emci=8f769a5f-1824-f111-9a48-000d3a14b640&emdi=a400927d-6a24-f111-9a48-000d3a14b640&ceid=553006

So … what is happening with ACIP in light of the recent court ruling invalidating most of its actions over the last year? Dunno, beats me. ‍️ Article by Melody Schreiber.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/20/acip-vaccine-advisory-committee

Good to know! Honestly, I can’t tell if this sign was meant as a warning or if there used to be an actual trail there so you could go check out the snake superhighway. #deathvalley

@mlanger I did not know it had a name! I thought it was “three inches of water on top of salt flats.”

@douglasvb I believe my next post will answer this question

I collected more data on the Rosette Nebula, and gave it a reprocess. This time I tried out the new Veralux narrowband processing scripts in Siril to produce this pseudo-SHO image.I based my workflow on Rich's Deep Space Astro tutorial, with a few changes. The tutorial is here: https://youtu.be/8UEDg_vCPWc.The first situation I ran into was that some of the surrounding O3 looked splotchy after I upped the O3 gain in Veralux Alchemy to bring out the core. I opted to forgo the O3 gain in Alchemy and instead wait until I was finished in Siril. Then I bumped up the cool temperature in the core in Topaz, where I had masking tools.The other thing I did differently was to skip the narrowband to RGB script for the starmask, and instead run it through the Veralux HyperMetric stretch, and then recompose the starless and starmask versions in Starnet++. I mean, it's already a false color palette, so it's pointless to worry about the star color police, right? #astrophotography49 * 300 second subs, Canon R8 astro-modified body, Canon RF 100-500mm lens, L-Ultimate filter, Bortle 8.5Siril, GraXpert, Cosmic Clarity, Starnet++, the Veralux scripts, Topaz, Photoshop