When people think of astrophotography, they usually picture someone trekking out to a remote desert or a pitch-black mountain peak, miles away from civilization. But for me, the gateway to the cosmos was right outside my door—on my deck when I lived in North Park, San Diego.
Instead of backyard astrophotography, mine was strictly on-deck astrophotography. I lovingly dubbed my setup La Paloma Observatory.
Shooting from North Park came with a massive hurdle: light pollution. Trying to pull faint planetary details or crisp lunar craters out of an urban sky saturated by city lights, streetlamps, and neighborhood glow is a serious exercise in patience. Every clear night was a battle of contrast, dialing in the exposure, and hunting for that perfect, steady pocket of air. As the images show, you don't need a remote mountaintop to capture the wonders of the universe.
A detailed, close-up shot of Jupiter. You can clearly make out its iconic horizontal atmospheric bands alternating in shades of orange, tan, and cream. There are also tiny, faint pinpricks of light right next to it; its Galilean moons.
A gorgeous, high-contrast full Moon (or near-full). The image captures the entire lunar disc, beautifully highlighting the dark volcanic plains (maria) contrasting against the lighter, heavily cratered highlands.
A sharp shot of Saturn. Even with city light pollution, you managed to cleanly separate the planet's tilted ring system from the main gas ball, suspended against the blackness of space.
A dramatic, razor-thin crescent Moon. The sunlit sliver glows with a warm, golden-yellow hue, while the texture along the terminator line (the shadow edge) hints at deep lunar shadows.
A twilight landscape shot showing a San Diego sunset sky fading from deep blue down to a warm orange horizon. In the foreground, silhouettes of neighborhood palm trees, streetlights, and buildings capture the vibe of shooting straight from an urban deck.
Three incredibly crisp, ultra-close-up lunar surface patches. These heavily detailed shots showcase dramatic topography—craters within craters, jagged ridge lines, and deep shadows cutting across the lunar plains. The crispness of the crater walls indicates a really dialed-in focus.
Four-Pane Lunar Grid (Top): This is a 2x2 collage showcasing phenomenal, high-magnification shots of the Moon's surface topography.
Top-Left: Captures the curved edge of the lunar limb, showing the undulating profile of mountains and crater rims against the blackness of space.
Top-Right: Focuses on a deep, elongated crater valley right on the terminator line, where the low-angle sunlight casts massive, dramatic shadows.
Bottom-Left: Shows a dense cluster of overlapping impact craters, highlighting decades of lunar history.
Bottom-Right: A stunning shot focusing on a massive, prominent circular crater basin with beautifully preserved, terraced walls and a smooth floor.
Lucky's Reflection: This central photo is fantastic. Someone wearing a blue protective glove is holding up the circular, highly reflective primary telescope mirror. Reflected perfectly in the clean glass is Lucky, your African Gray parrot. She is perched on the edge of a beautiful, ornate ceramic bowl decorated with colorful orange and green floral patterns, looking right at her own reflection (or the camera). The background shows a hint of a red curtain, adding a nice pop of color behind the telescope setup.
Cleaning primary mirrors is nerve-wracking work, but having Ms. Lucky there as my quality control assistant clearly paid off based on how sharp that reflection is!
The "Blood Moon": A spectacular full-disc shot of a lunar eclipse. The entire Moon is illuminated in a deep, warm, rusty copper-orange hue. The clarity is excellent, allowing you to see the lighter ray systems emanating from craters like Tycho even through the deep orange shadow of Earth's umbra.
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