I’m an amateur astro-photographer based in New South Wales, Australia.
I like to display my images of the cosmos and write about them in a way that encourages readers with a curiosity about the Cosmos.
All astro-images are my own except when stated to the contrary.
Some images will be about hunting for tiny and faint objects which can be barely seen. Context is important. How far away is it? What type of object is it?
So, not every image will appear photogenic or be a photographic masterpiece and none will match the Hubble Space Telescope.
A secondary passion of mine is for photographing electrical storms, which I share on a sister site at Lightning Focus and sometimes I might post the occasional lightning shot here too.
I am very grateful to all of my followers but it is impossible to follow everyone in return for following Cosmic Focus, although I will sometimes look at your website.
I sometimes get asked why I call myself Ggreybeard.” Why the double G? The answer is simply that in a world of several ‘Greybeards‘, there is only one ‘Ggreybeard‘!
Other Links
| Lightning Focus | Sister site, dedicated to my images of electrical storms. |
| Flickr | My photographic gallery. |
| Citizen Science | Donating my idle computer time to science projects. |
| @Cosmicfocus1 | Twitter feed dedicated to this site and fully automated until the current owner of “X” destroyed it. |
| @Ggreybeard | My personal wisdom in 280 characters or less. Mostly lapsed now. |
| Some time ago I set my page to “private”. If you know me and wish to see my feed, please contact me. |
Copyright
Yes
You may direct link to any of my pages or images, provided that they are attributed and not taken out of context. Your courtesy advice via my contact page would be appreciated.
No
You may not copy or reproduce my images or posts without contacting me to seek my written permission. If I subsequently give permission, it will be subject to attribution appearing with the photograph.
You may not alter the appearance of my images.
All images © R.Powell except where stated otherwise.
Disclosures
- My images may be improved using standard post-processing procedures: stacking, cropping, colour enhancement and brightness/contrast control techniques, using various software.
- With regards to Artificial Intelligence, I do not post astro images created by AI and will never offer them as one of my genuine photographs.
- In January 2024, I purchased a copy of Topaz AI image enhancement software. The purpose is mostly to remove noise but potentially also to sharpen the image. I tested Topaz on some of my earlier astro-images and found that, in many cases, overall quality was improved. However I also noted that the software sometimes made undesirable changes. My policy is to treat each image on its merits but to retain the enhancements made by Topaz if the overall advantages outweigh the less conspicuous disadvantages. The images up to 2023-12-31 remain unchanged on this site but Topaz may be used on subsequent images.
Acknowledgements
My acknowledgements to the late John Lennon and his brilliant song ‘Imagine’ for inspiring the sub-title to this site.
