Battle Point astronomer wins global award for nebula photo

Bainbridge Island’s astronomy community just earned an out-of-this-world accolade, so expect some more howling at the moon than usual.

Brian Puhl, a member of the Battle Point Astronomical Association, won first place in Sky-Watcher International’s Photographer of the Year contest for his capture titled “Wolf’s Cave,” featuring two nebulae, one dusty brown and one deep red, and the remnant shell of a supernova.

In Puhl’s prize-winning image, the reflection nebula in the foreground and the supernova remnant shell in the background evoke a lone wolf entering a den by the light of the moon. Kevin LeGore, lifelong astronomer and judge of Sky-Watcher International’s photography contest, explained that Puhl’s precision and unique subject matter caught his eye amongst the other entries.

“Brian’s image is of a very faint, off-the-beaten-path object known as Barnard 175, a dark nebula in the constellation of Cepheus. This constellation houses a large collection of these dark and dusty nebulae and it can be a real challenge bringing out the details in this region,” said LeGore. “It takes a lot of time to capture, and when processing the final images, a careful hand to make sure you don’t overwhelm and lose the elegant details found in these nebulae. Brian did a great job digging into this area without sacrificing those beautiful, fine ribbons of detail found here. His final image is smooth, well defined and has a ton of character. To me it just stood out, thus my choice to pick it.”

Puhl explained that balancing the red supernova shell and the brown nebula in the front was the biggest challenge. The supernova could only be exposed by a technique called narrow-band imaging, which filters out nearly all visible light and focuses on a single element in the cloud — in this case, hydrogen alpha.

“When you put it together, you get a sense of depth you didn’t normally have before because you never saw that hydrogen alpha,” Puhl said.

Astrophotography is not a casual hobby by any means, but the picture that won Puhl gold took expertise. Astrophotos are produced by calibrated telescopes, which produce hundreds of images over the course of several dozen hours that are then stacked to reveal the phenomena in our night sky. It’s not just about a long exposure, however; photographers must account for the rotation of the earth.

“It is not simply looking at a bright object like a bird or landscape and snapping a photo, but all forms of photography have their own unique set of challenges. Astrophotography just combines many challenges into one process,” said LeGore. “It takes a lot of time and understanding to dial in an astrophotography system in order to capture the final image we see here. Many times, it takes hours and even multiple nights to complete the final image.”

Puhl has only been in the hobby for about two years, but he’s progressed relatively quickly. His interest was sparked when he noticed he could see the Milky Way in his backyard; he took some pictures on his cell phone and began to muse over the idea of astrophotography. He had some terrestrial landscape photography before, but it had never piqued his interest like the Milky Way did that night.

A few months and almost $30,000 later, Puhl had a pair of telescopes and an astrophotography setup. He runs the telescopes every night while working the night shift, and tries to strike a balance between creating art and capturing scientific information.

“Starting out from the cell phone, it’s like, ‘Wow, this is kind of cool.’ Then you get into the real stuff and it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s what I was missing,’” he said. “No matter how you look at its interpretation, I try to at least accurately represent the data.”

Puhl is also assisting BPAA with updates to its telescope in the Ritchie Observatory, which should be installed in early 2025. The organization has granted Puhl the honor of capturing an image of the new telescope’s First Light, a tradition in observatories that celebrates the first time a new telescope is switched on.

Chuck Wraith, BPAA boardmember, said he’s hoping that the new equipment will allow the organization to perform some scientific work — like looking for exoplanets and doing spectroscopy — but he knows the public will be thrilled to see Puhl’s work.

“It’ll be the first time we’ll get a sense of what it can do, and Brian will help us really make something special,” Wraith said.

Puhl’s portfolio is publicly available here: https://www.astrobin.com/users/WhooptieDo/