2025 was a year filled with new equipment adventures (ultimately overcome but challenging at the time); dark skies travel – another fabulous trip to the Atacama Desert and an amazing birthday dark skies trip to Utah; three one-night stands in the Beast; and the taking away and giving back of my front patio imaging location.
The Year of New Equipment:
Baye-Aire Remote Imaging Solution
A couple of nights imaging in the cold New Mexico nights over New Years Eve weekend had me wishing for a remote-control set-up that would allow me to sit inside the Beast to operate the equipment and check on sequence status throughout the night without having to get bundled up to venture out into the cold. When I described that “need” for BeersAP equipment to Paul He made it happen! The Baye-Aire (Paul’s design of an ASI-Air like system) consists of a transmitter/receiver setup using two 50-foot lengths of Cat 6 cabling. The system was tested during the New Moon nights in January 2025. The Southern Cross successfully captured images of IC2177 Seagull Nebula and IC1805 Heart Nebula from the front patio, while I sat toasty warm inside our bedroom’s sunroom! The BeersAstrophotography.com website blog with the rest of the story is: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/latest-tool-in-the-quiver-baye-aire-remote-controller/
Trips in and out of Mono Imaging
Motivated by a combination of my unsuccessful attempts at capturing the faint OIII transmissions of the OU-4 Giant Squid within the SH2-129 Flying Bat Nebula and my curiosity with learning new technology (imaging with a monochrome camera)…I suggested a birthday present idea to Paul…the QHYCCD MiniCAM8 monochrome camera with a built in filter wheel and seven astrophotography filters (LRGB and SHO). He jumped right on it, ordering the new camera in mid-August, so it arrived in time to be an anniversary present.
It turned out that while the idea of an integrated camera/filter wheel seemed like a good one, QHYCCD’s software driver implementation caused it to not turn out so well. I could never get the filter wheel driver to function properly and consistently. So, I ended up returning it. Then Paul jumped right on it again, ordering a new ZWO ASI6200MM full frame mono camera and a ZWO EFW 7×2″ filter wheel – pushing me head first into the deep end of mono image capture (and processing!). The BeersAstrophotography.com website blogs with the:
- Story of the equipment assembly and initial trials: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/the-plunge-into-mono-imaging-second-times-a-charm/
- Story of the challenges of mono processing: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/dialing-in-my-mono-data-collection-and-processing/
- Story of the Christmas mono imaging and processing extravaganza – touching on the on-going issues and doing a side-by-side mono-to-dark skies one shot color camera comparison: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/dialing-in-my-mono-data-collection-and-processing/
Dark skies travel:
A Second Most Amazing Trip to the Atacama Desert
March brought my second annual to Chile’s Atacama Desert with friends, Jan Elliott and Dave Parks. The travel there was a nightmare (including 6 hours in Sao Paulo, Brazil searching for my equipment – that was on the flight from Sao Paulo to Santiago that I was denied boarding). Once I arrived (over 24 hours after Jan and Dave), it was a fabulous trip with five nights of glorious dark skies, fun times touring and visiting in San Pedro de Atacama; then closing out my time in Chile with my family. The full story and images are: https://beersastrophotography.com/recent-adventures/2nd-annual-most-amazing-astrophotography-trip-to-the-atacama-desert/ .
The story of repeated winning images captured there is: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/southern-hemisphere-skies-are-award-winning/
I gave a presentation on my Atacama Desert imaging experience, first to the CSASTRO Imaging Group in April then to the full club meeting in August. The blog at: https://beersastrophotography.com/recent-adventures/csastro-presentation-on-atacama-desert-imaging-19aug2025/ contains a recording of the presentation and the promise that I was going to create a much less distracting one (which, you guessed it – has not happened!)
65th birthday trip to Utah
October brought my 65th birthday. X0 and x5 birthdays deserve extra celebration – this year’s definitely fit the bill – we drove (in the Expedition) to the Bryce Canyon, UT area. Along the way we stopped in Green River, Utah – having a fun burger and beer (Polygamy Porter on tap!) dinner at Ray’s Tavern. (Little did we know that would be our last beer or other alcoholic beverage to accompany a meal out until we returned to Grand Junction for a night on the way home – gotta love Utah liquor laws!).
We checked out Milky Way imaging spots along the way, deciding that going that far for DSO imaging was a bit extreme. Paul had found the perfect landing and imaging spot in Cannonville, UT – the Bryce Park Place. The skies were clear and dark.
The story of those travels and the four DSOs I captured during the three nights at Bryce Park Place is: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/birthday-dark-skies-trip-to-utah/ …and a better late than never blog was an image of the Milky Way core (attempted captures of the Orionids Meteor Shower and Comet C-2025 were a bust) that I finally got around to processing as I was closing out the 2025 AP Journal and planning for this summary: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/one-last-image-from-our-birthday-dark-skies-trip-to-utah/
Three dark skies night in the Beast
All of our 2025 camping trips came in one-night increments! One night in July on BLM land near Powderhorn, Colorado – an area we are calling Tolvar Flats – meant to be a recon trip back to that area for our anniversary in August (https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/one-night-beast-recon-trip-to-tolvar-flats/ ).
Mother Nature got wind of our August dark skies plan for a return long-weekend at Tolvar Flats and blanketed the area with clouds. There was one clear night forecast in the Comanche National Grasslands area, near Springfield, Colorado – clear and HOT (102°). So, we did a repeat of our 2023 anniversary adventure – Paul and Zeus spent their night at the Cobblestone Inn, while I imaged out of the back of the Expedition on the BLM land near there. This time I remembered to bring the correct autoguider scope bracket, but I did manage to lock myself in the back of the Expedition near the end of the night! Good thing I’m agile and could climb over the top of the barricade we put up when Zeus was a puppy separating the back from the back seat! I’m not sure I related that part of the story, but the rest of the adventure is here: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/one-night-in-the-expedition-in-springfield-co/
Our third one-night Beast trip was to the Kiowa National Grasslands on the rim of Mills Canyon – our favorite go-to spot for the ease of getting there, setting up, and of course the dark skies. As we were driving in, we commented on how all the rain we’d had this year had made the Grasslands greener and more lush than we’d ever seen it. Unfortunately, with all that lush green came MOSQUITOS – vicious ones! They chased us out of there after one miserable night. …and on the way out, I got to practice my best civil engineering skills (I’m an electrical and mechanical engineer)…building a rock bridge through the VERY deep mud puddle by the cattle guard. That sorted story is here: https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/good-news-clear-skies-during-the-new-moon-bad-news-rain-green-grasslands-mosquitos/
Imaging from the HCH front patio
We spent most of 2025 involved in Phase Two of a three-stage home renovation project to correct foundation issues. The major impact of Phase Two was the loss of my front patio imaging spot. The patio and all the (expansive soil) underlying it were removed in April, not to be returned to functionality (and the doors leading out to it ceremoniously unwired) until November. The blog from mid-November (primarily about my mono imaging adventures) relays that special moment – for both Zeus and me – when we could finally go back out there. https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/the-plunge-into-mono-imaging-second-times-a-charm/
To say I’ve been taking full advantage of its return, is an understatement. The patio was the host to December’s Cold Supermoon imaging (https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/decembers-cold-supermoon-processed-as-a-mineral-moon/ ) and the Christmas week mono imaging extravaganza. (https://beersastrophotography.com/photography-journals/the-rest-of-the-story-and-images-of-my-12-days-of-christmas-mono-imaging-extravaganza/ )
Summary and 2025 image collages
If you’d made it this far – having to follow links to intersperse all these words with pictures – THANK YOU. But you deserve to finish out this year with a glimpse at the collages I’ve put together of my favorite images – the image at the beginning of this blog was our annual Christmas card’s astro collage, so I’ll close with the collage of my favorite images from the Atacama Desert.
