Andrew McCarthy

@AJamesMcCarthy • 483,932 subscribers

Exploring the universe from a backyard in Arizona. Get my calendar 👇

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Live Cam

Andrew McCarthy

Shorts

I’ll never get used to seeing a rocket just sitting on the beach like this

BOOM! I happened to be shooting this galaxy when a star decided to explode. Pretty lucky! You can see it appear close to the galactic core. I’ll be shooting it every night for a while to watch it change brightness! This is comparing photos captured 10 days ago vs 5 min ago.

This is the rig I used to get this shot Sadly the GoPros didn’t get anything due to the delay, but it gave me ideas how to plan around this in the future. This was my 10th Starship launch. The first I saw (flight 2) was my first launch ever, and changed my life.

This gigantic thing flies to space in about 90 min

He REALLY doesn’t like being bothered when he’s playing on his cat tree

I spent 3 hours yesterday with my solar telescope pointed at a tall tornado-y looking thing on the sun. This 14-Earths-tall swirling column of plasma was raining moon-sized gobs of incandescent material on the sun. I can't imagine a more hellish place.

I was in the middle of shooting my narrowband data on this galaxy when the supernova happened so I was probably one of the first people to photograph it!

In case you needed to feel insignificant today, here's a solar flare significantly larger than our entire planet (This entire region is twice as wide as Jupiter) Captured from my backyard with a modified telescope. Do not look at the sun with a telescope- you could go blind!

I can’t believe I’ve gone my whole life without seeing a lightning bug… how are these things real

Here’s a timelapse I captured of the annular eclipse from Saturday morning. Seeing it like this really helps me visualize the movement of the sun and the moon.

A tense moment: a watchful Greggors sneaks by the slumbering Bailey

Look in the upper arm of this galaxy- you'll see a star appear to blink in and out of existence. That's a supernova! Very recently discovered in m101: the Pinwheel galaxy (which I happened to be shooting when this happened)

He sings his sad song if I don’t give scritches the whole ride

I’m capturing one of the most important moments in the history of spaceflight, and it was *nearly* perfect 🤣😭

I captured photos of the moon every night for a month to watch how it dances 👀

Humans for scale

A cheery good morning from the orange one

Using public images from the Artemis II mission, I hand-aligned and sequenced a series of images to recreate their flyby. This was the best I could do using these images and some digital interpolation. I don’t believe a view like this has ever existed before.

My first photo of Andromeda captured over 6 years ago vs my latest. Don't let where you are today discourage you from where you want to be.

Here’s the raw stack vs processed photo. All of that color was there in the image data, and when brought out it reveals a hidden world of geological curiosity!

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This feels like a scene out of a sci-fi movie but it’s just my drive to work this morning

Here’s the time-lapse I promised you from yesterday’s solar activity. Complete with Earth to scale and a bonus of the sun’s rotation. This is easily one of my cleanest time-lapses I’ve managed over such a long period. Enjoy!

It’s always worth it to chase down a difficult shot. You either succeed or you learn.

I never get tired of watching the movement of our sun. Captured using a modified telescope from my backyard

Every so often I see a post from someone that didn't find an eclipse an incredible experience. They didn't seem to get the hype. The sun turned into a black ball with glowing plasma shooting off of it. If that doesn't get you to feel something, nothing will 😆

This is probably the best look at the shockwaves I’ve seen from the latest Starship flight. Captured from a GoPro I clamped onto a proper camera to record simultaneous video. (I’ll show you the photo the better camera took in the reply)

Behind the scenes of me editing ~500 of your cats into this calendar

Despite fighting malfunctioning equipment, I captured one of my most surreal videos ever. That’s the moon crossing in front of the sun. You can see mountains on the lunar limb as it transits the chromosphere. Captured using a specially modified telescope from Utah in 2023.

Just got done watching Mars slip behind the moon. This is a real-time view through my 12” telescope. So cool.

I used a modified telescope to capture high-speed video of the eclipse at a long focal length. Seeing the lumpy mountains of the moon against a backdrop of churning plasma is incredibly surreal. (I hope you weren't sick of eclipse posts 😜)

I'm thrilled to share this unique collaboration with Artemis Il astronaut Reid Wiseman. Artemis II was a unique opportunity to get high-quality imagery of the moon, and Reid was gracious enough to capture some special image sets for me during the lunar flyby.

Zooming into my latest gigapixel moon photo. Created using around 150,000 individual images and two cameras/telescopes to get the most obscenely detailed image I could. Zoom in yourself using the link in the second post.

I went through the entire archive from the Artemis Il mission to create timelapses of many scenes experienced by the astronauts. Many of these views are firsts of their kind. While this was a ton of work, I see it as practice, as one day I plan on capturing these images myself.

The moment I captured something incredible on Saturday. These reactions were completely unscripted, just the sheer awe of the moment. I still can’t believe it’s real See what I’m reacting to tomorrow morning- I’ll send email subscribers the first look. Signup link in the reply!

Reviewing these monstrous moon images up close is key to making sure they look good in print. This one gets my seal of approval. Look at all the hidden details 👀 This goes out to my email and X subscribers Wednesday. It’s more than just a detailed moon photo.

Don’t worry, he’s not sad any more

The footage I got from this launch is unreal. This is 350 of 3500 photos hand stabilized showing the hot staging sequence. There's so much happening in this video every time I watch it I notice something different. Bravo SpaceX team! Tons more content coming, including prints!

Pleased to share my 2025 recap! I'm so proud of everything that went down this year, it was the most chaotic year of my life but by far the most rewarding. Thank you for all your support in 2025, none of this would have been possible without you. What was your favorite shot?

Let’s see how well you all know the sky! This video from ABC7 Eyewitness News shows something unique, that they admit could be something natural, but they’re not sure. They suspect it has something to do with the alleged drone activity. What do YOU think it is?

I’m capturing one of the most important moments in the history of spaceflight, and it was nearly perfect 🤣😭