Astrophotography, for me, has never just been about the final image.

It’s about the process — the planning, the compromises, the failures, the experiments, the quiet nights when data is streaming in from a telescope hundreds of miles away, and the question that keeps coming back: how can this be better next time?

This website, PFRAstro, exists to make that process visible.

From First Light to Full Systems

My “official” entry into astrophotography happened in 2023 with a smart telescope. It removed friction and replaced it with wonder. I could capture deep-sky objects quickly, see results immediately, and — without realizing it at the time — begin learning how data, processing, and presentation worked together.

But curiosity has a way of escalating.

By early 2025, I had moved into a full imaging rig at home. That’s when the real education began: polar alignment that wasn’t perfect, guiding graphs that told uncomfortable truths, calibration frames that mattered more than I expected, and processing workflows that could either reveal structure or destroy it entirely.

Later that year, I built a primary rig designed for remote operation, now running regularly from a shared observatory. Most of my deep-sky imaging today comes from that setup. Imaging remotely forces discipline — you don’t get to “just fix it tomorrow,” and every design decision around power, automation, monitoring, and recovery actually matters.

At the same time, I still take a visual scope to star parties. There’s something grounding about stepping away from dashboards and scripts and just looking up.

The Shift From Images to Systems

Somewhere along the way, my focus shifted

I still care deeply about the images — composition, color, structure, depth — but I became equally invested in the systems that produce them:

• Exposure planning and signal-to-noise tradeoffs

• Calibration consistency across nights and filters

• Power management and failure modes in remote environments

• Processing repeatability instead of one-off hero edits

• Understanding why data looks the way it does, not just how to stretch it

That curiosity naturally turned into tools.

I started writing PixInsight scripts to analyze integrations, export structured metadata, and quantify improvements instead of guessing. I built dashboards to monitor imaging sessions in progress. I experimented with normalization strategies, SNR analysis, and alternative ways of thinking about “enough data.”

Much of this work never fits cleanly into an Instagram caption or an AstroBin description — and that’s exactly why this site exists.

Why Build My Own Platform

I’ll continue sharing final images on Instagram and AstroBin. Those platforms are fantastic for discovery and community, and they’re not going anywhere for me.

But they aren’t designed for depth.

They don’t leave space for:

• Project planning decisions and revisions
• Intermediate processing stages and failures
• In-flight imaging updates while data is still being collected
• Code, scripts, configuration files, and reasoning
• Long-form explanations of why something worked — or didn’t

PFRAstro is my answer to that gap.

This site gives me a place to slow down and document the full arc of a project — from idea, to capture plan, to early stacks, to processing experiments, to final result (if and when it arrives). It’s a space where I can publish things that are unfinished, evolving, or purely exploratory.

That’s intentional.

What You’ll Find Here

This is not a gallery site. It’s a working notebook.

You’ll find:

• Detailed project logs, including exposure plans, revisions, and results
• Processing walkthroughs in PixInsight, including linear and non-linear decisions
• Noise, SNR, and data-quality analysis with real numbers, not just intuition
• Custom scripts, tools, and small utilities I build along the way
• Thoughts on remote imaging, automation, and reliability
• Experiments that don’t always succeed — and what they taught me

Some posts will be technical. Some will be reflective. Some may only make sense to a small subset of people who enjoy staring at integration statistics and wondering if another two hours is worth it.

That’s okay.

Sharing the Process, Not Just the Wins

One of the things I’ve learned most clearly is that astrophotography improves fastest when the process is shared, not just the outcomes.

Perfect images are inspiring — but understanding how someone arrived there is empowering.

By documenting my work openly — including the missteps, tradeoffs, and revisions — I hope this site becomes useful to others navigating similar paths, especially those moving into mono imaging, narrowband work, remote setups, or more analytical processing approaches.

If something here saves you time, helps you diagnose a problem, or simply reassures you that struggling with OIII noise is normal, then it’s doing what I hoped it would.

A Living Project

PFRAstro is not a finished thing. It’s evolving alongside my imaging, my tools, and my understanding of the sky.

Some posts will age. Others will be rewritten. New ideas will replace old assumptions. That’s part of the deal.

This site is where I get to think out loud — in public — about astrophotography as both an art and a technical discipline.

Thanks for being here.

Clear skies.