Hi Fediverse! I’m Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of 45+ novels, wrangler of lots of pets including a dog, two cats, two horses and a mini horse. Most relevant to this space is my absolute passion for astrophotography, which I’ve been working hard at for about five years. I still consider myself a relative beginner.

I have two complete equipment setups and I’m about to have a third in a small personal observatory in a quiet and dark Bortle 2 part of the county. Meanwhile this is my main setup. Astro-Physics Mach2 GTO mount, 152mm Stellarvue scope, 80mm Stellarvue scope riding piggyback, guide scope and camera. The imaging cameras are Astro-specific DSLRs, Nikon D810As.

To give you some idea of scale, the largest of these active regions, AR4136, is about the size of three Earths.