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Friday, August 1, 2025
It has been 8 entire months since my last post on this blog.
Sorry.
Now that the apology is out of the way, I feel it's time to finally return to the hallowed territory of my forgotten blog: shake off the dust, clean out the cobwebs, get a few more nights out of the week where I don't get a proper amount of sleep. You know the drill. My astrophotography activity as of late has been a bit spotty, especially with the unfortunate run of cloudy weather that seems to be plaguing Central Texas recently. I thought the clouds were bad last year. I am now reconsidering my criteria.
Either way, it's a good idea to check up on where I've been. It's been 8 months, sure, but those 8 months were hectic and full of the universal phenomena I like to call "life gives you lemons, but it also just tosses a bunch of other fruits and a random chair."
Y'all, I don't even know how to caption this picture
Where else to begin on my lore-dump if not for the very, very large elephant in the room: college applications. It was practically the defining aspect of my life at the inception of this blog. My writing this is in no small part a direct result of trying to create a tangible way to communicate that I like space to the folks in admissions departments across America.
Long story short, I am now attending Cornell University with the hope of majoring in physics. My primary focus will likely be on either astrophysics or quantum physics, although I have yet to make a decision.
It's a bit surreal. On one hand, I get to pursue my life's passion at a school that is known for being quite good at it. I get to see the world, make new friends, and build a path for myself with (honestly undeserved) freedom. On the other hand, I will, for the first time in my life, be alone. With great responsibility comes great stress.
I guess time will tell how that ends up. Astronomy-wise, it means more clouds and chilly weather. Yippeeeee.
Graduation picture with a bunch of ppl from my church
This also means that I am now a high school graduate, with all of the perks and benefits that come with it.
Which is not much.
And yet, I look back at my time in the rather unsanitary halls and dimly lit classrooms and can't help but feel a pang of nostalgia, even though it's only been a few months. Am I glad it's over? Absolutely. But going off to college means giving up a bit of the naivete and child-like nature that I have had my entire life. It means leaving my friends.
In two weeks, I leave for Ithaca, NY. I leave behind my home.
Perhaps nostalgia is just a side-effect of a deeper urge: wanting to remember the positives in life, especially when you know there will be difficulties and growing pains. I'm still young, but even now it's starting to take root.
The second order of business, and far less melancholy, is my research paper. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I was working through an online program called Lumiere to write and publish a paper in a high-school science journal. It was something I began the same summer that I started this blog, also mostly for the purpose of getting something fancy to say on my college application. What started as just a means-to-an-end actually ended up being one of the most interesting things I've ever done.
Yes. Stop laughing. I'm a nerd.
It's about magnetic monopoles, which, in very simple terms, are a type of magnet that only has one pole. I'm pretty sure every magnet you've ever seen has a north and south pole. Magnetic monopoles have just one or the other, at least theoretically. The problem is nobody can find them, even though theories say they should be everywhere. I make the case that certain technological advancements wholly unrelated to monopoles are key to discovering more about fundamental physics. That key can be found in the cosmos.
N E R D
Do I understand anything I wrote? Not really, but neither does anybody else. Welcome to particle physics, baby! We throw stuff at the wall and hope it sticks.
It is now published in the National High School Journal of Science, and I've provided a link if you want to take a look. I'll make a yap post some other time, but right now, we have more of my life to get to.
School was still busy, and it stayed busy for quite a while.
With summer came a time of rest and procrastination. The weather was being uncooperative, and the pressures of band, academics, astronomy, college applications, and just about everything else became notably absent. Senioritis was at an all-time high, and I was now in probably the laziest time of my life.
I filled my days with random hobbies like learning how to draw, working sporadically on a fiction novel, playing (and designing) board games with friends, watching social media, and sleeping. I love sleeping in. LOVE. IT. But there weren't many opportunities to do astronomy, at least seriously. There were a few clear nights I took out the scope only to come in disappointed. M57 remains my arch nemesis, and now it's too late to make a yearly ring nebula post. For that, I apologize.
But that didn't mean all of my astrophotography was completely gone. It was just marinating.
South Africa is pretty
Like, really really pretty
The one big event during my senior summer was a mission trip to South Africa. I'd never really gone on a mission trip before, but my dad was the one organizing the whole thing. When he asked if I wanted to tag along, I said yes.
In between the many service activities and VBS (Vacation Bible School) camps we ran, I was appreciating the absolutely beautiful nature the country had to offer. I feel like living in the modern world has caused me to forget that nature isn't really isolated to a camera screen or some documentary footage to uncover on Netflix. It's something humans have and still continue to live in. The skies there are dark. You can see the Milky Way at night, and the wide-open plains are perfect for astronomy viewing. Actually, the landscape is strangely reminiscent of Texas.
For a country that has often been on the receiving end of unfortunate luck, the people there were downright inspiring. I actually felt guilty when I had to make a testimony about a struggle I had, because what have I been through that can even hold a candle to the experiences of some of the people I met?
The thing that stuck with me, however, was one person I met there. Like me, he's a senior in high school. Like me, he's amazed and inspired by the beauty of the cosmos. Like me, he wants to explore it. Unfortunately, physics does not tend to pay well, and while I came from a background of privilege, he did not. Reality has given him a dilemma: pursue physics, or pursue another passion in medicine.
It's the kind of rude awakening that sends a person back to reality. The fact that I can even sit down and write this blog is a gift. The fact that I can take these pictures is also a gift. It is all a wonderful gift.
That was his name, by the way: Gift.
My South Africa physics buddy
Sadr Region
Rho Ophiuchi
To signal my grand return, the great resurgence, if you will, I began doubling down on targets I had avoided before. The Sadr Region proved to be a pretty interesting returning challenge since I'd never done a wide-field quite like this one. Most of the time, I avoided taking pictures unless I could see the object in the individual raw frames. For Sadr, I just had to go off of hope. Hope that I was doing everything right and hope that I hadn't lost my mojo.
I did indeed lose a little bit of my mojo, but there were some interesting developments.
I found the more careful approach I had to aligning the telescope and choosing good-quality frames to stack elevated my photography capabilities beyond what I had done before. It's still not great with the light pollution issue and the aging optics of my DSLR, which seems to multiply the effects of alt-az in an equatorial world. I still struggle to post-process, and my computer skills are wonky. But it's a start.
This, on top of finally participating more in the Austin Astronomical Society, has given me the determination to start fresh. I want to keep taking photos, to keep pursuing my passion, to keep writing this blog that nobody reads (but seriously, if you've gotten this far, thanks).
So yeah, more stuff on the way.
[Epic conclusion]
AAS has some cool side quests. Look that this beauty!
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