Kalamazoo, MI
This is where it started. Midnight Zoo was born under Bortle 7 skies in Kalamazoo, Michigan — a city that doesn't exactly roll out the red carpet for astrophotographers. Light pollution, weather, and urban glow made it clear early on that if this was going to work here, it was going to require discipline.
Every image and story on this page was captured from within the Kalamazoo area. No dark site escapes. No cherry-picked conditions. Just what's possible when you refuse to let a compromised sky be the reason you don't shoot.
Kalamazoo isn't unique in its difficulty, but it stands as a model for what's possible. There are cities like it all around the world, waiting for someone to uncover the stories that can only be written at night.
Best IMAGES under Kalamazoo skies yet...
The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, is the nearest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way at about 2.5 million light years away. Stretching over 200,000 light years across, it contains roughly a trillion stars and is slowly moving toward our galaxy in a future cosmic merger. This image was captured from Kalamazoo’s Bortle 7 light polluted skies using LRGBHa filters, with a total integration tim
The Cygnus Loop is the delicate, filamentary remains of a supernova that exploded roughly 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, stretching across nearly three degrees of sky in the constellation Cygnus. Shockwaves from the blast continue to energize surrounding gas, creating intricate ribbons of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur that weave through space like cosmic lace. Also captured from Kalamazoo skies, thi