About Me

My name is Justin Pickens, and I’m a father of two beautiful children and a husband to the love of my life and high school sweetheart. I have enjoyed astronomy my entire life, staring up at the night sky in wonder of what could be out there in the dark.

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In college, I majored in history and philosophy but received waivers to take additional astronomy courses offered to majors. Looking back, I wished I pursued a career in space, science, or some other STEM field, but I thought I hated math. What I didn’t realize is that math is really the language that ties everything in the universe together. I eventually learned this through studying sentential logic, but by the time I embraced a love of math, I’d already moved into the world of public finance and government administration. Having established a career, built a family, and purchased a home, I have become too comfortable to go back to school to pursue astronomy as a profession. To be clear, I love my job and feel a deep connection to its mission, but I still wonder, “What if?”

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Photography

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Along the way, I picked up photography as a hobby. I used my camera to capture landscapes, nature, and wildlife as my wife and I traveled to Alaska and other beautiful locations. Of course, this turned into family photos and what we called “happy snaps”. I still wanted to do something creative with photography, but we were not traveling to wild locations as frequently.

That’s when I start photographing the night sky, but still in a very novice way. It started with taking single photos of the night sky and learning how to adjust the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed to maximize the amount of light collected. Quickly, I learned astrophotography shots are rarely single frames, but rather dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of frames stacked on top of each other. I started downloading free software to stack images together and started to notice the stars were not always round when I zoomed in. This was because of star trailing.

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Star trailing is the apparent motion of stars in the night sky, captured as streaks or trails in long-exposure astrophotography. Instead of appearing as fixed points of light, stars create curved or linear streaks across the image. Star trailing occurs due to Earth’s rotation. As the Earth spins on its axis, the sky appears to move relative to a fixed observer.

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I started to look online for solutions to this problem and came across star trackers. A star tracker is a motorized mount designed to counteract Earth’s rotation, allowing a camera to track the apparent movement of stars and capture sharp, pinpoint stars in long-exposure astrophotography. After looking at different types of star trackers, I landed on the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i.

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The Dive into Astrophotography 

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In January of 2021, my wife bought me the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i as a birthday present. This was my most meaningful step into the world of astrophotography. Not only did it allow me to take longer exposures of the night sky, but I dove headfirst into searching the internet for videos, articles, and content about astronomy and astrophotography. It’s amazing how much more information is available now than just 4 short years ago.

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Over the last 4 years, I have bought new telescopes, new mounts, and new equipment to aid my observations of the night sky. I am in no way an expert, nor would I ever claim to be more than simply an amateur astronomer/astrophotographer. I created this website to record and share my journey as a creative outlet beyond simple 300-character blurbs. I hope you enjoy and we can all grow in our love of the dark.

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Clear Skies!

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Justin Pickens

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