Jason Chu Photography

05/16/2026

Flying at 43,000 feet with a window to the Universe. One of the coolest experiences ever.

04/29/2026

St. Louis Sunset from the top of the Gateway Arch. This was a real tough shot to capture because the windows are only 7 inches (!) high, and I had to get into awkward positions to adequately cover the sky and ground below with my (heavy) 70-200mm lens. I perfectly timed the shot when the sun was already half down, and I was lucky there was a Cardinals game at Busch Stadium (left). Surprisingly there was no (noticeable) image quality degradation from the glass. Panorama stitching was also challenging as the sky had some ugly variations in brightness/hue, and the usual stitching errors that had to be corrected by hand. All in all took about 10 hours to fully process.

04/25/2026

Going back and processing some photos from my archive that I never got around to editing. Here is the UH 88" telescope lit by some tail lights with the Milky Way as the backdrop.

06/24/2025

Recently I visited the Large Binocular Telescope in southern Arizona to capture some nighttime action at the observatory. As the name suggests, the LBT comprises of two 8.4 meter primary mirrors mounted side by side on a common telescope mount. This is the left primary mirror or "SX" (from sinestra in Italian). At the time it was configured for LUCI observations (a near-IR instrument), with the adaptive secondary mirror deployed above, and a tertiary mirror right above the primary, which diverts the light to the left front bent Gregorian focus where LUCI is mounted (circular area next to the bright red light). Also visible but out of the telescope beam is the LBC, the optical prime-focus camera. The distant landscape appears blurred because the telescope was moving while observing a target.

This was also the first time I got to use my new Z8 for really dark astro-landscape shots, which could take up to 15 min. exposures without an external remote.

12/06/2024

Another shot of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. I had captured it the night before but the full moon blasted the foreground into a flat oblivion (lighting-wise). So I setup before sunset the next day and captured this late twilight shot with a faint sunset glow, and a moonless landscape lit only by ambient sky light.

10/17/2024

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS from the Sonoran Desert

12/14/2022

We were excited to be able to travel to two countries in 2022 where I shot some more awesome time lapse shots! And we were very lucky to be able to travel back to Santorini for a second time! Enjoy!

A time lapse video from our travels to Chile and Greece in 2022.

10/07/2021

Presenting my latest time lapse video of Maunakea and Haleakala! Between 2017-2020 I was able to capture interesting events, including a lunar eclipse, a naked eye comet, and even a brief shot of the 2018 Kilauea eruption.

The final installment of time lapses I filmed on both Maunakea on the island of Hawai`i, and Haleakala on the island of Maui.If interested in using my footag...

08/07/2021

Been having some more fun with my infrared camera as of late! This is the Campanile (Sather Tower) on the UC Berkeley campus. At the top is a full carillon, a set of bells on which songs can be played. An interesting tidbit: I had the rare opportunity to play on it back in my senior year of college!

Edit: Here is a short video on what it's like to play it. The practice room is the same one I used too!
https://www.britannica.com/video/182759/discussion-carillon-Sather-Tower-University-of-California

07/31/2021

Happy Friday everyone! Another panorama from the archives, this was the view from our room on Santorini in the early morning. I got up early to bring my overnight time lapse setup back inside, and didn't even put my contacts in to capture this view before it disappeared.