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Andrew Dunn | Astrophotographer

@gateway_galactic

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🌌 Deep Space | Milky Way | Star Trails
📍 St. Louis, Missouri
🔗 Full Resolution Images ⬇️

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This foreground has been on my bucket list for years.

Ever since I saw Alyn Wallace's California road trip video, I've wanted to shoot the Milky Way over the ancient bristlecones. I finally made it up to the Schulman Grove, and standing among them is a strange feeling. A lot of these trees are over 4,000 years old, older than the pyramids in Egypt. They were already ancient when most of human history was still being written.

Somewhere in this grove is Methuselah, one of the oldest known trees on Earth at nearly 4,900 years old. The Forest Service keeps its exact location a secret and won't even release photos of it, so no one walking through here knows which one it actually is. You're surrounded by these gnarled, weathered trees, and any one of them could be it.

They grow up here in the White Mountains at nearly 10,000 feet in brutal conditions, which is exactly why they live so long and take on these twisted shapes.

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Sky Watcher Star Adventurer

Location:
Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, CA

#astrophotography #milkyway #amateurastrophotography #milkywayphotography by @gateway_galactic

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2 months ago

New tent's first night under the Milky Way at Tuttle Creek, right next to Alabama Hills.

This was our first stop camping through the Inyo Valley last month. The hills were the main focus that night, but I couldn't pass up a shot of the new tent — it's replacing my old Boy Scout tent that's got to be over 20 years old at this point. The red glow you can see scattered through the sky is Hydrogen Alpha, blended in to bring out the emission nebulae along the Milky Way. It's the same gas that lights up star-forming regions, mostly invisible in a standard RGB shot until you add it back in.

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Sky Watcher Star Adventurer

Location:
Tuttle Creek Campground
Alabama Hills, CA

#astrophotography #milkyway #alabamahills #amateurastrophotography #milkywayphotography taken in Alabama Hills Recreation Area by @gateway_galactic

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3 months ago

Been wanting to bring Morgan out here since the first time I saw this place.

Alabama Hills feels genuinely alien, and I couldn't wait to share it with her. She loved the rock formations, and loved being part of the shot even more. Boot Arch is a bit of a hike off the main road but it's worth every step — just scout it in the daylight first so you're not stumbling around out there in the dark.

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Sky Watcher Star Adventurer

Location:
Boot Arch
Alabama Hills, CA

#astrophotography #milkyway #alabamahills #amateurastrophotography #milkywayphotography taken in Alabama Hills Recreation Area by @gateway_galactic

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2 months ago

This is a single frame. No stacking, no integration time.

Which goes against everything I usually do. But the airglow that night was intense, and airglow moves. Stack a bunch of frames and all that green structure smears into one flat wash across the sky. You get a cleaner image and lose the thing that made it interesting.

So I took the tradeoff. More noise, but the airglow stayed where it was. I was genuinely surprised how much detail held up from one exposure — the Sadr region and Andromeda are both up there, and I blended in some Hydrogen Alpha to bring out the star forming regions.

Be sure to take a look at the RAW image at the end, you can even see the airglow there!

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM

Location:
Mono Lake, CA

#astrophotography #milkyway #monolake #amateurastrophotography #astrophotographytips taken in Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve by @gateway_galactic

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2 days ago

This piece of glass only lets in one color of light.

An Ha filter blocks essentially everything except a narrow 12nm band centered on the deep red wavelength that hydrogen gives off. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and when nearby stars energize it, it glows at that one exact wavelength. Everything else — light pollution, moonlight, the rest of the spectrum — gets stopped at the glass.

That's what makes it a force multiplier. In a normal RGB shot, that faint red signal is competing with everything else hitting your sensor and it mostly loses. Put the filter on and the only thing coming through is the thing you're after. Then you blend that back into your RGB image and all this structure you couldn't see before just shows up.

It also means you can pull emission nebulae from skies that have no business producing them. Light pollution doesn't emit at that wavelength, so the filter cuts through it.

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Astronomik 12nm Ha Filter

#astrophotography #milkyway #hydrogenalpha #astrophotographytips #amateurastrophotography by @gateway_galactic

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6 days ago

Buried my car in sand trying to get to this spot last year.

The road out to the tufas turned from gravel to sand without warning and that was that. So getting back there this June and actually walking away with the shot felt pretty good.

The sky had a lot of airglow that night, which always puts me in the same spot. It's faint green light coming off our own atmosphere, and the tricky part is it drifts while you shoot. Stack too many frames and it can smear into one green wash across the whole sky. Shoot a single frame and you lose everything stacking gives you. I went with stacking here and it held together better than I expected.

Standing out among these tufas in the dark is its own thing. Limestone towers that formed underwater and got left behind when the lake dropped.

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM
Sky Watcher Star Adventurer 2i

Location:
Mono Lake, CA

#astrophotography #milkyway #monolake #amateurastrophotography #milkywayphotography taken in Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve by @gateway_galactic

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12 days ago

My camera can't see color. That's the point.

Mono cameras don't have a color filter over the sensor like a normal camera does. Every pixel collects every photon that hits it, which makes them more sensitive and sharper. The tradeoff is you get no color at all, so you add it back by shooting through separate red, green, and blue filters.

That splits the job in two. Luminance is the unfiltered pass and it's where all the detail lives — structure, dust, the faint outer edges. RGB is just there for color. So you spend hours on luminance and only a handful of subs on RGB, then blend the color over the detail at the end.

One thing worth knowing if you're starting out: broadband like this really wants a dark site. There's no narrowband filter cutting through light pollution here, so city glow lands right on top of your signal. This one came from Echo Bluff, a Bortle 2 in Central Missouri.

Process:
Step 1. Raw Stacked Image
Step 2. Gradient Correction
Step 3. Star Removal
Step 4. Camera Raw Filter
Step 5. Luminance Blend
Step 6. Screen Stars

Gear:
ZWO ASI2600MM
Rokinon 135mm f/2.0
Sky Watcher GTi

Location:
Echo Bluff State Park, MO

Editing Tools:
PixInsight
Photoshop

#astrophotography #amateurastrophotography #nightphotography #deepskyastrophotography #astronomy taken in Echo Bluff State Park by @gateway_galactic

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16 days ago

This red glow doesn't show up in a normal photo.

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, and when it gets energized by nearby stars it gives off light at one very specific deep red wavelength. That's Hydrogen Alpha. The problem is it's faint and buried in everything else your camera picks up.

So I shoot a separate pass through a 12nm Ha filter, which blocks almost everything except that exact wavelength. Whatever comes through is hydrogen and basically nothing else. Then I star align that frame with my RGB image and blend the Ha into the regions where it's dense. Suddenly all this structure you couldn't see before is just there.

Shot at Lake George in Mammoth Lakes earlier this year. The other slides are the starless version, the raw, and the RGB before any Ha.

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Sky Watcher Star Adventurer 2i

Location:
Lake George
Mammoth Lakes, CA

Editing Tools:
Sequator
Photoshop
Pixinsight

#astrophotography #milkyway #mammothlakes #amateurastrophotography #milkywayphotography taken in Mammoth Lakes, California by @gateway_galactic

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23 days ago

Space is not truly empty.

Those dark patches around the nebula look like empty gaps, but they're actually dust — thick clouds of it blocking the light of everything behind them. You need really dark skies to see any of it, so I drove out to Echo Bluff State Park to camp for the night. Some of the darkest skies in Missouri, and nothing I could get from my backyard.

This is LRGB on a mono camera, so color and detail get captured separately. RGB handles the color, luminance handles the detail. The split ends up pretty lopsided — 20 minutes each on red, green, and blue, and six hours on luminance. Color doesn't take much. Detail takes time.

Gear:
ZWO ASI2600MM
Rokinon 135mm f/2.0
Sky Watcher GTi

Location:
Echo Bluff State Park, MO

#astrophotography #irisnebula #darknebula #deepskyastrophotography #amateurastrophotography taken in Echo Bluff State Park by @gateway_galactic

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a month ago

A wide-eyed view 🌌

With astronomy and astrophotography, it’s easy to get caught up thinking about giant telescopes and complicated setups. But the reality is, you don’t need a massive rig to capture incredible images of the night sky. A camera, lens, and portable star tracker can take you a surprisingly long way!

Astrophotographer Andrew Dunn used a DSLR and wide-angle lens mounted on a star tracker to capture this stunning view of the Perseid meteor shower. The wide field of view beautifully showcases our galactic core stretching above the landscape, creating an image that makes you feel like you’re right there beneath the stars. ✨

See more of Andrew’s work with lenses and telescopes at @gateway_galactic
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📷 @sonyalpha A7 III (astro-modified)
🔎 Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM
⚙️ @skywatcherusa Star Adventurer by @gateway_galactic

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a month ago

The water was completely still that night, which is half of why this one worked.

Lake Mamie in Mammoth Lakes, on a cool night back in June. No wind at all, so the surface held a clean reflection of the core the whole time I was shooting.

I also tried something new in the edit — running a background gradient extraction before anything else. It models the uneven brightness across the frame and pulls it out, which flattens the background and lets the fainter stuff actually show up. There was more detail hiding in this file than I expected once the background was out of the way.

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Sky Watcher Star Adventurer 2i

Location:
Lake Mamie, Mammoth Lakes, CA

#astrophotography #milkyway #mammothlakes #amateurastrophotography #milkywayphotography taken in Mammoth Lakes, California by @gateway_galactic

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2 months ago

Another lunar eclipse in the bag.

Here was my view of the August 2026 eclipse. 96% of the moon slipped into Earth's shadow, just barely shy of a total. And thankfully, maximum hit before midnight, so I didn't have to choose between the shot and a decent night's sleep before work.

Shot on the Sigma 150-600, affectionately known as the moon bazooka.

Gear:
Sony A7iii (astro-modified)
Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports

Location:
St. Louis, MO

#astrophotography #lunareclipse #bloodmoon #moon #nightphotography taken in St. Louis, Missouri by @gateway_galactic

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2 months ago