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cosmic_background

Andrew McCarthy

Exploring the universe from a backyard in Arizona
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1.5K
posts
916
followers
1.9M
following

Our future in space is bright, and there will be many more significant milestones on the path to expanding into the solar system. I wasn’t alive for the moon landing, so I’m hoping to see people landing on the moon and Mars in my lifetime.

This rocket gives me hope that not only that will happen, but I may get a shot at going into space myself. Starship makes things so much more accessible!

Obligatory: I’ll have this available in print through Tuesday. Grab one at the link in my bio. Qualifying orders get a free calendar too (not available for sale yet otherwise)


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Our largest planet is filled with secrets 👀


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2 years ago

Some of my favorite moments of 2023. Here’s to another year of epic space photography!


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2 years ago

Starship’s largest and most powerful iteration has its first test flight potentially as soon as Thursday. I’ll be on location to bring you photos and videos of the rocket in flight.


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2 days ago

The VLA in New Mexico is a surreal, inspiring place. Massive radio telescopes work hard through the night to bring us data from the stars.

Studying the other places in our universe teaches us more about ourselves.

May we never lose the courage to venture beyond Earth.


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5 days ago

Taking the 1.7 million photos wasn’t really difficult… it was looking through them all 😵‍💫

Get “The Traveler” in print for just a couple more days at the link in my bio.

What should I shoot next?


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5 days ago

I took 1.7 million photos of our Star over 6 days to catch this photo of a commercial jet in front of the sun.

The moment it happened, TWO floating prominences were visible, making this not just my best aircraft transit photo, but one of the luckiest of my career!

I caught it with the full solar disc in 10fps and a closeup in 85fps (played back here at 24fps). Since I caught it with both focal lengths, it made possible for a much higher resolution photo, allowing huge high quality fine art prints. I’ll have them available for a limited time at the link in my bio.


32.7K
373
1 weeks ago

I took 1.7 million photos of our Star over 6 days to catch this photo of a commercial jet in front of the sun.

The moment it happened, TWO floating prominences were visible, making this not just my best aircraft transit photo, but one of the luckiest of my career!

I caught it with the full solar disc in 10fps and a closeup in 85fps (played back here at 24fps). Since I caught it with both focal lengths, it made possible for a much higher resolution photo, allowing huge high quality fine art prints. I’ll have them available for a limited time at the link in my bio.


32.7K
373
1 weeks ago


I took 1.7 million photos of our Star over 6 days to catch this photo of a commercial jet in front of the sun.

The moment it happened, TWO floating prominences were visible, making this not just my best aircraft transit photo, but one of the luckiest of my career!

I caught it with the full solar disc in 10fps and a closeup in 85fps (played back here at 24fps). Since I caught it with both focal lengths, it made possible for a much higher resolution photo, allowing huge high quality fine art prints. I’ll have them available for a limited time at the link in my bio.


32.7K
373
1 weeks ago

I took 1.7 million photos of our Star over 6 days to catch this photo of a commercial jet in front of the sun.

The moment it happened, TWO floating prominences were visible, making this not just my best aircraft transit photo, but one of the luckiest of my career!

I caught it with the full solar disc in 10fps and a closeup in 85fps (played back here at 24fps). Since I caught it with both focal lengths, it made possible for a much higher resolution photo, allowing huge high quality fine art prints. I’ll have them available for a limited time at the link in my bio.


32.7K
373
1 weeks ago

I took 1.7 million photos of our Star over 6 days to catch this photo of a commercial jet in front of the sun.

The moment it happened, TWO floating prominences were visible, making this not just my best aircraft transit photo, but one of the luckiest of my career!

I caught it with the full solar disc in 10fps and a closeup in 85fps (played back here at 24fps). Since I caught it with both focal lengths, it made possible for a much higher resolution photo, allowing huge high quality fine art prints. I’ll have them available for a limited time at the link in my bio.


32.7K
373
1 weeks ago

The stunning color of the far side of the moon, photographed by human hands for the first time since 1972. Advancements in digital photography over the last 54 years gives us a much better look at the moon’s battered history.

The photos used in this shot were captured by @astro_reid, and processed by me. This was captured by the Nikon Z9 they brought with them, and is a stack of about 30 photos. You can see the individual photos in their unedited format on the massive Artemis II photo archive.

I saw some people complaining about duplicate photos in that archive, without realizing how invaluable the data in those photos is!

One day I hope to capture photographs like this myself 😌


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1 weeks ago

There is currently a ~Jupiter-sized mass of plasma floating 100k miles over the sun. I captured this photo just a couple minutes ago using a modified telescope from my backyard.


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1 weeks ago

Here’s one of my favorite photos I captured of the last Falcon Heavy launch. Was such a privilege to be able to set up cameras at various places near the launch pad.


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1 weeks ago

Throwback to one of my favorite (but probably most exhausting) photography projects, when I watched Jupiter for 6 weeks straight.

This required timing my captures for when the red spot was pointed right at Earth to line up the details for this timelapse, so I was shooting at all hours of the night. Exhausting, but worth it.


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2 weeks ago


Incredible. Awesome. Glorious.

Hard to put into words how I felt while I was first going through theses shots brought back by Artemis II’s @astro_reid

Since the images were so high fidelity, I was able to push the color to reveal details of the far side I’ve never seen before.

The unedited source images I used for these images can be found now in the official Artemis II image archive among 12,000 other photos!


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2 weeks ago

Incredible. Awesome. Glorious.

Hard to put into words how I felt while I was first going through theses shots brought back by Artemis II’s @astro_reid

Since the images were so high fidelity, I was able to push the color to reveal details of the far side I’ve never seen before.

The unedited source images I used for these images can be found now in the official Artemis II image archive among 12,000 other photos!


6K
54
2 weeks ago


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