- Following 501
- Followers 33.2K
- Engagement 2.72%
- Avg likes 931
- Avg comments 11
About Alex Hawkinson
Alex Hawkinson (@gazingoutwards) is a Photographer creator on Instagram, also filed under Travel. The account has 33,205 followers and 390 published posts. Recent posts average 931 likes and 11 comments, an engagement rate of 2.72%.
With 33.2K followers, Alex Hawkinson is a micro creator by the common 10,000 to 100,000 definition. Set against 501 accounts followed, the audience works out to about 66 followers per account Alex Hawkinson follows. Alex Hawkinson uses an Instagram professional account. Flinque files Alex Hawkinson under Photographer, with Travel as a secondary category.
The Instagram bio for Alex Hawkinson runs to 19 words. The latest activity Flinque has on record for Alex Hawkinson dates from February 2024.
Story Highlights
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390 Posts
All 10 recent posts Flinque holds for Alex Hawkinson are single images. 390 published posts give Alex Hawkinson a moderate archive on Instagram. Against the audience, that is roughly 85 followers for each post published. Alex Hawkinson also keeps 4 story highlights on the profile. All 10 carry captions, averaging 160 words each. The captions are written mainly in English. Words that recur across them include star, been, these, stars and skies.
Continuing with my obsession with the great Andromeda galaxy, here is another panel that I captured in LRGBSHO with my Planewave CDK24 at high magnification. I spent more than 100 hours collecting this data to bring out details in one of the spiral arms that I haven’t seen before.
Mostly occluded by vast tracts of interstellar dust tens of thousands of lightyears long, we can see hundreds of areas of nebulosity and intense star formation. I can’t help but feel that it must be absolutely teaming with life.
I hope you are as inspired as I am by it and am thankful to you all for being on this journey with me. Wishing you a joy filled, healthy, and prosperous 2024!
-Alex
As many of you know, I’ve been passionate about our night skies since I was a kid. My early love of stargazing was honed into a sharp passion by an inspirational high school teacher, John Koser. A few years ago, I evolved beyond visual astronomy into astrophotography. The software platforms available for processing astro data were remarkably terrible, as though they had been stuck in the 1990’s. Naturally, with my heavy background in software platforms and IoT, I couldn’t help but see an opportunity “fix this software issue” and open up the skies for many more people.
Serendipitously, in 2022 I met Dan Roelker, an incredibly talented technology leader who had led software development at SpaceX. Our minds melded and we founded OurSky with a bold vision of democratizing access to real time space data and supporting developers in building applications for the new space age.
Fast forward a year and we have raised $9.5M from incredible investors, built a world-class team, and today launched the first access to the platform for developers of space domain awareness applications. There is MUCH more news coming soon and it will open up opportunities for everyone to contribute to our exploration and understanding of our sky.
TechCrunch wrote a nice article covering today’s news here:
You can also read the OurSky press release and learn more about the company on the web site at
The team will also start sharing here on Instagram at and other social platforms as well.
Congratulations to Dan Roelker and the incredible OurSky team!
Onwards and upwards!
Looking closely at the image that I shared yesterday of one of the most iconic nebulae of our summertime and fall skies, I investigated what star is responsible for ionizing the interstellar gas across this vast swath of local space. It was originally hypothesized by Edwin Hubble that it was Deneb, the bright blue star that you can see in the upper right of my image. However, scientists soon realized that Deneb is not “hot enough” to be the culprit.
It turns out that the star that is responsible is the one I have circled within this close up! It appears so dim simply because, from our vantage point on Earth, most of its light is being blocked by the dark cloud of dust that sits in the foreground between us and the star. It has been named Bajamar Star after the original name for the Bahamas which is “Islas de Bajamar”, which is right around where it is located off the “Florida coast” of the North America nebula.
Although the light from the Bajamar Star is dimmed by almost 10,000 times by the dark cloud that sits between Earth and it, you can still make it out in my image as shown here. If it weren’t being attenuated by the dust in this way, it would be as bright in our skies as the other major stars of Cygnus.
I hope you like it and have a great day!
This is a wide field view of the North America and Pelican nebulae as taken from my 10 panel mosaic. It captures a vast expanse of “local” space within our Milky Way just 2,590 lightyears away and measuring more than 140 lightyears across. In wide field, it becomes apparent that these two nebulae are actually part of one massive pool of ionized interstellar gas that is giving birth to thousands of stars systems, but which appears split in two by a massive tract of dark dust that sits in the foreground between the Earth and this target.
Amazingly, the entire region is being ionized by the brilliant radiation of a single star. Can you guess which one? It is tough because it sits behind the dark foreground dust causing our view of it to be deeply attenuated. I’ll share a marked image tomorrow that shows exactly where it is, but wanted to share this beautiful view with you in the meantime.
I hope you like it and have a great day!
It reminds me of the Thors Helmet nebula and is something I had never appreciated before in our summer and fall skies.
I hope you like it and have a great day!
This image may not be super dramatic, but it is representative of one of my favorite things about this passion. In a recent wide field shot of the belt stars in Orion, I noticed a little “blob” of reflecting dust above the central star Alnilam. Intrigued, I decided to take a look at higher magnification with one of my bigger scopes. I do these things without foreknowledge of how it will look or researching what the object is. Even in cases where it has been well studied, this stokes the feeling of exploration in me. As often as not, I end up looking into something that hasn’t been closely observed to the level where there are well documented details about it. Our cosmos is so vast, and I love the feeling of “witnessing” and bringing some focus to objects such as this.
This is IC 426, a dense and isolated little cloud of interstellar raw material in which new stars and systems are likely forming just beyond our ability to see. From the outside, we see an evolving cloud that is lightyears across, illuminated by the dim light reflecting off of it from nearby stars.
How simple. How complex. How amazing.
There are lots of problems with it (Ie all of the other background stars wouldn’t be in those positions since they are artifacts of the frames of each of the big stars), but I still enjoyed showing my family the relative star colors between the major stars and how much they vary.
I have some ideas on how to do this better. Let me know what you think!
I’ll be sharing a lot of these data sets over the coming months, but wanted to share just a small sneak peek at section of one of the frames. This is processed in an SHO palette showing an absolute circus of star formation and interaction. Andromeda is so ALIVE!
Let me know what you think!
Imagine how different our skies would feel if we could see these things with our naked eye!
Alex Hawkinson's engagement
Alex Hawkinson's engagement rate on Instagram is 2.72%, between 1% and 3%, or 1 to 3 likes and comments per 100 followers. On a typical post that comes to about 1 like or comment for every 37 followers. Likes outnumber comments by roughly 85 to 1, with 931 likes and 11 comments on an average post, so most reactions are taps rather than replies.
Engagement rate
2.72%
- Avg likes
- 931
- Avg comments
- 11
- Interactions : followers
- 1 : 37
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Frequently asked questions
These answers about Alex Hawkinson are generated from the Instagram profile data Flinque holds for the account.
Who is Alex Hawkinson?
Alex Hawkinson (@gazingoutwards) is a Photographer creator on Instagram, also filed under Travel. Alex Hawkinson uses an Instagram professional account. The Instagram bio for Alex Hawkinson runs to 19 words.
How many followers does Alex Hawkinson have?
Alex Hawkinson has 33,205 followers on Instagram (33.2K). Set against 501 accounts followed, the audience works out to about 66 followers per account Alex Hawkinson follows. 390 published posts give Alex Hawkinson a moderate archive on Instagram.
What is Alex Hawkinson's engagement rate?
Alex Hawkinson's engagement rate on Instagram is 2.72%, between 1% and 3%, or 1 to 3 likes and comments per 100 followers. On a typical post that comes to about 1 like or comment for every 37 followers. Likes outnumber comments by roughly 85 to 1, with 931 likes and 11 comments on an average post, so most reactions are taps rather than replies.
What does Alex Hawkinson post about on Instagram?
Flinque files Alex Hawkinson under Photographer, with Travel as a secondary category. All 10 recent posts Flinque holds for Alex Hawkinson are single images. The 10 recent Instagram captions Flinque holds for Alex Hawkinson repeatedly use the words star, been, these, stars and skies. Alex Hawkinson writes those captions mainly in English. Alex Hawkinson keeps 4 story highlights, which open with a free Flinque account.
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Alex Hawkinson's contact details are not published on Flinque's public profile. Brands with a free Flinque account can shortlist Alex Hawkinson and use Flinque's outreach tools wherever a contact route is on file.
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Public profile data sourced from Instagram. Flinque is not affiliated with Alex Hawkinson.