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During the week of October 19th, I had multiple trips and many hours at the Middle Fork Preserve, specifically the North Waterfowl Management Area and the brand-new Dark Sky Trail (+ Galaxy Loop). This was an especially clear sky week and presented an opportunity to see the (1) Milky Way with a new moon, (2) Orionid meteor shower, and (3) Comet C/2025 A5 Lemmon and Comet C/2025 R2 SWAN.
I have spent lots of time and many visits at Middle Fork. My first visit was with the UIAS, which is the UIUC Astronomy club.
Session 1 (October 19th)
I visited Middle Fork with Eugene on October 19th. Leaving slightly after the beginning of sunset, we started racing to Middle Fork to be there in time to finish setup before dark.
A picture of the sunset and wind turbines on the way to Middle Fork
The drive there was very nice. We stopped and took this picture.
Sun setting at Middle Fork
For some reason, at Middle Fork, I have a fascination with standing on the road. It feels very surreal; you could probably lie down, and no car would bother you for long periods of time.
Finally, the sun had set and I began shooting pictures of the Milky Way, while Eugene set up for imaging the comets.
While the camera I rented from the library shot unstacked 15 second exposures, I tried shooting some single shots from my iPhone. I set my iPhone to RAW and used the OS-provided Camera app.
Extremely overprocessed wisp of Milky Way via iPhone 30s exposure
I am very unhappy to see how significantly the iPhone oversharpens and computationally processes images in RAW.
While shooting, we met a new friend named Peter from the UIUC Accounting department. He watched Eugene and I capture shots.
Furthermore, I had some disastrous technical difficulties with my camera. For some odd reason (likely a mistake in my intervalometer setup), the camera only shot for approx 8 minutes. Regardless, after stacking in Sequator and basic processing in Lightroom, I was able to get the shot below.
Stacked image of the Milky Way
For my first time, I was pretty happy with these results. After I proved I could see the Milky Way at Colbert Park, I finally captured a real image of the (stacked) Milky Way. It's not perfect but I am very happy with my first "Milky Way shot".
In parallel, my Seestar captured the below picture of M31.
Seestar, unedited, stacked image of M31
This is the first galaxy I have shot with the Seestar - very impressed. After this, Eugene and I began a very cold drive home.
Session 2 (October 21st)
I went again, this time with my MatSE group of friends: Peter, Anneliese, Zach, Shantiv, and Alex. Again, the sky was extremely clear. We met a new friend at Middle Fork, who was quite the character. He was named Tal, and introduced himself as a "redneck bum". He was very cool and very appreciative that we were enjoying nature. He also was a big fan of the Corvette.
We captured many fun night-time images.
Group photo. Left to right: Aniket, Alex, Zach, Shantiv, Peter, Anneliese.
We experimented with lightpainting.
Materials Science and Engineering (MATSE)
On the first take, Shantiv managed to draw the S backwards. Good work.
Peter and Anneliese
I captured some couples images of Peter and Anneliese. These came out very nicely.
Cygnus Cloud, Nikon Z7. Single 30s exposure, untracked. Taken by Shantiv.
Shantiv seemed to learn a lot during this trip and became very engaged with astrophotography. He pointed his camera straight up and shot a 30 second exposure of the Cygnus Cloud region of the Milky Way.
Session 3 (October 23rd)
Once again, I traveled to Middle Fork for the final time with a group of old friends from the Gies sector of UIUC. These are friends I made last year, mostly through Ayush. I went with: Adarsh, Sharan, Shantiv, Sanjana, Praytush, Simran, Kaushika, and a few others. It was good to see Adarsh, Sharan, and Praytush after much time.
This time, we observed from the new Dark Site Trail at Middle Fork, housing the Galaxy Loop. It was a very nice facility.
I captured a very brief image of the Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon, right before it went under the horizon.
Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon via Seestar
Next, I captured a brief image of the Comet C/2025 R2 SWAN.
Comet C/2025 R2 SWAN via Seestar
Finally, while doing this, I captured another Milky Way shot. There are some weird green bands of noise streaking in the image.
Milky Way, stacked and edited.
Overall, the visits to Middle Fork were very fun. These were probably the last time I will visit Middle Fork before leaving UIUC.