I went on my first backpacking trip to the beautiful Thousand Island Lake over the weekend. I think it was worth it to haul my near 6-pound camera gears up 4k feet.

Acquisition: Horsehead & Flame Nebula region. ASI2600MC Pro + dual-narrowband (Antlia ALP-T 5nm). 50×180s broadband, 30×300s Ha+OIII.

Processing: Calibrated & stacked, GraXpert, SPCC. Extracted stars with StarNet. Built Ha from continuum-subtracted R, stretched Ha + starless RGB, combined as HaRGB, then added back stretched stars

Total integration: 56h 10m

Integration per filter: - Lum/Clear: 5h 15m (63 × 300") - R: 3h 55m (47 × 300") - G: 3h 20m (40 × 300") - B: 3h (36 × 300") - Hα: 13h 20m (80 × 600") - OIII: 27h 20m (164 × 600")

Equipment: - Telescope: William Optics RedCat 51 II-U - Camera: Player One Ares-M Pro - Mount: Sky-Watcher HEQ5 PRO - Filters: Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2", Antlia 3nm Narrowband Oxygen III 2", Antlia V-Pro Blue 2", Antlia V-Pro Green 2", Antlia V-Pro Luminance 2", Antlia V-Pro Red 2" - Software: Adobe Photoshop, Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight, Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA)

I've wanted to shoot the Veil Nebula for a while, so on my second night at a Bortle 3 dark sky location last weekend I finally shot it.

Equipment and exposure:

• Sky-watcher EQ6-R Pro
• William Optics Redcat 51 WIFD
• Unmodified Cannon EOS Rebel T7i (800D)
• Uniguide 32 guide scope + ZWO ASI120MM-MINI
• Mini-PC running N.I.N.A.
• 78 x 300s subs: 6.5 hours total integration time

Processing:

• Deep Sky Stacker for calibration, registration, stacking
• Pixinsight for the rest
• ImageSolver / SPCC
• SCNR
• BlurXTerminator
• Deep SNR
• Stars removed with Starnet
• Statistical stretch
• Masked off the bright areas to help normalize brightness across the nebula
• CurvesTransformation to add contrast and saturation
• Color adjustments using CurvesTransformation
• Star stretch
• Pixel Math to add stars back in
• Crop and rotate

Capture: 9h40m total, spread over 2 nights

• H: 39 exposures of 300s
• O: 41 exposures of 300s
• S: 36 exposures of 300s
• 35 Flats for each filter
• 35 Bias
• 35 Darks

Equipment:

• OTA: Skywatcher 130PDS newtonian
• Camera and filter wheel: QHY minicam8 mono version
• Guiding: WO uniguide 50 + asi224mc + uv/ir cut filter
• Mount: hypertuned HEQ5 with Rowan belt mod
• Morefine M9 mini PC, Pegasus Astro Powerbox micro
• Capture software: NINA

Processing:

Pixinsight:

• Separate channels: No DBE needed
• Separate channels: BlurXterminator
• Separate channels: NoiseXterminator
• Separate channels: Seti Astro's statistical stretch script
• Separate channels: GHS
• RGB combination + NXT => raw SHO image
• Removed magenta and then greens => corrected SHO image
• LHE on corrected SHO => LHE SHO image
• Foraxx utility script for foraxx image and RGB-like stars
• SCNR on inverted stars and invert back, to remove magentas

Affinity photo 2:

• Raw SHO palette applied as luminosity on the Foraxx image
• LHEqualized and corrected SHO applied as soft light to increase contrast and saturation
• Color noise reduction
• High pass filter from the LHE plate applied as soft light for sharpening
• Selective color adjustment to balance reds and yellows
• Curves adjustment
• Vibrance adjustment to desaturate dark pixels a bit
• Add stars with Screen with curve transform to reduce star field intensity

So the palette is actually a blend of Foraxx and classical "simple" SHO.

Due to the dynamic approach of the Foraxx method, it generates a very pleasing color palette. However, the noise of the Oiii channel is propagated to the others. A "classical" simple SHO composite has much less noise but requires the reduction of greens, and saturating the remaining colors. This is why the raw SHO was used for the luminosity layer for the Foraxx, so we get the best of both worlds: the colors from Foraxx and the details of the raw SHO.

Additionally, removing the greens and magentas from the raw SHO does result in a nice palette but the colors are weak and flat. However, I found that using that as a soft light layer on the Foraxx colors made for a very pleasing saturation and contrast enhancement.

NGC 6883 is an open star cluster located in the Cygnus constellation. The teal nebulosity is Oiii gases (ionized oxygen) ejected from a Wolf-Rayet star, WR134. WR stars are short lived and extremely hot, ejecting their outer layers into space. The red nebulosity is Ha (hydrogen alpha) light emitted from hydrogen gases in the area.

Image captured with ZWO ASI533 camera, Skywatcher Esprit 120ed achromatic triplet refractor telescope & 0.77 focal reducer on an iOptron CEM70G equatorial mount with integral guide camera. Automation with mini PC running APT. Tracked with PHD2. 5 hours total imaging time. 90 second subs. Final processing with Pixinsight.

The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293)

EQUIPMENT

• SCOPE:                    Skywatcher 190MN (Matsutov Newtonian)
• CAMERA:                ASI2600MC/MM DUO OSC
• MOUNT:                 WarpAstron WD20
• GUIDE SCOPE:        Sky-Watcher EVOGUIDE 50ED V2 Doublet guide scope
• GUIDE CAMERA:    ASI 120mm guide camera

SOFTWARE-CAPTURE: NINA (Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy) and PHD 2 guiding

LIGHT / WEATHER CONDITIONS     

• Bortle 2 sky
• Clear
• Low wind
• Approximately 7 degrees C

CAPTURE

64 x 5min subs  24/8/2025 12:08am-5:41am 320 min (5hrs 20 min)

no darks, no flats

SOFTWARE IMAGE PROCESSING

Pixinsight

• weighted batch preprocessing
• Channel Extraction
• Linear Fit
• Channel Combination
• Dynamic Background extraction
• Histogram transformation  
• Export image

Lightroom

• Mask by luminosity
  • Drop exposure
  • Drop highlights
  • Ramp contrast

Overall adjustments

• Increase texture
• Drop clarity
• Ramp vibrance
• Ramp saturation

I took this photo in Shenandoah National Park on October 10th, 2024. This was during the massive substorm at around 10PM that night and I'm still in awe of how these photos turned out.

I finally got to go to a minimal light pollution place on a new moon with my girlfriend it sucked that you can still see lights in the distance but I think it’s pretty neat

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Actually got some decent skies last night! First time on this target for me, but an opportunity to test the new L-enhance filter. Bortle 6/7 suburbia. FWIW, the typical “grey” sky background after stretch was reduced significantly. On the other hand, it was much harder to locate a suitable guide star without increasing the exposure interval times to 3 seconds. Didn’t seem to hurt guiding any with RMS bouncing between 0.32 - 0.56 arc sec.

Didn’t think dew was going to be an issue last night but things were pretty well soaked by 5am. Surprisingly, I managed to not lose a single sub due to it.

48 x 300” — Celestron Edge 8 w/0.7 Reducer (f/7)—ASI2600 Air with onboard guiding— EQ6R Pro

I’m curious to what I’m looking at here, this was shot on an I phone trying to keep my hand steady and then messing around in the photo editor. So I am aware it isn’t a great pic. However I’ve never seen a sky like it, unreal.

Messier 27 aka Dumbbell Nebula is a planetary nebula located around 1360 light years away in the constellation of Vulpecula. It was one of the first discovered planetary nebulae by Charles Messier in the year 1764. With a visual magnitude of 7.64 this planetary nebula is one of the brightest targets to locate. The whole nebula has a radius of around 1.4 light years. Which makes its diameter around 2.8 light years. What this means is that from the one end of the nebula cloud of this planetary nebula the other end is around 2.8 light years away. The central star is one of the largest known white dwarfs ever. When a sun-like star ends its life the radiation pressure overcomes the force of gravity and instead of collapsing itself such stars generate a tremendous amount of stellar winds that slowly blows away the surface of the star forming a planetary nebula. When you look at a planetary nebula just keep this in mind 5-6 billion years later our sun will form something like this. Coming back to the topic , when this star forms a planetary nebula the remaining core of the star now develops electron degeneracy force which is in accordance with the Paulis principle that no two electrons can have the same quantum numbers.This means that the star cannot collapse anymore as this stops the collapse of the star in this white dwarf phase. The age of this planetary nebula is around 9800 years and it has several knots in it which is caused due to the photoionization process. Photo ionization is the process in which an ion is formed when photons react with the atoms. The mass of the central white dwarf is around 0.55 solar mass.

Telescope used - ZWO seestar s50 Integration time - 8 mins Location kolkata India Bortle sky 9

Acquisition: NGC 2238 – Rosette Nebula. Explore Scientific ED127 FCD100 + ZWO ASI1600MM Pro on EQ6-R Pro. SHO: Ha 60×300s, SII 70×300s, OIII 61×300s.

Processing: Standard SHO workflow with calibration, stacking, and post-processing in Photoshop

Nikon Z5/Samyang 135mm/SWSA 2i

4.5 hours of integration time in bortle 2/3.

Stacked in siril. background extraction, color calibration, blurx, gradx, noisex and starx, stretching in PI. Luminance masking and final touches in photoshop.

SH2-155 - The Cave Nebula in SHO w RGB Stars

The Cave Nebula (Caldwell 9, Sh2-155) is a diffuse emission nebula within a larger nebula complex that includes a reflection nebula, and dark nebula. This deep-sky object is located in the constellation Cepheus and lies roughly 2,400 light-years from Earth.

This was imaged over the past few weeks from my rig at Starfront. I believe this is the first time I shot it.

I haven't done a SHO color palette in a while. I felt this palette really brought out the OIII blue vs the others that were primarily red.

Total Integration: 26 hours 15 mins

High Res Version: https://app.astrobin.com/u/jratino?i=0a0smv#gallery

Equipment: Stellarvue SVX102T and Flattener ZWO ASI533MM, ZWO AM5, EAF, EFW, ASI220 guide cam Wandererastro Rotator Lite William Optics Uniguide 50mm Chroma 3nm Ha, OII, SII, R, G, B

IG jlratino FB JL Ratino

First light with new telescope

My sister is travelling is german, I am planning to get the t2/t adapter for 1.25’’ Nikon D3300 which is the best brand and how much does it cost? Including the 2x barlow?

This morning i captured Europa making a shadow on jupiter with the red spot and io also visible, i'm quite happy with the result ! Equipment : dobson 200/1200 on equatorial platform, camera Neptune c-II Softwares : pipp, autostakkert, astrosurface

Equipment: Telescope - Askar 71f Camera - Minicam8 Filter - FCE (built in filter) Mount - Eqm35

This is definitely the best photo I've ever taken. I think using the FCE helped a lot as I captured a lot more Hydrogen than past shots.about 1.5 hours of data from bortle 7.5 (no light pollution filters needed!!!) and then stacked in dss, and processed in siril using mainly different stretches like generalized hyperbolic, and curves. Also, used graxpert in siril to get rid of gradients and then plate solved and photometric color calibrated.

This night I got my very first 5 minute exposure and it was actually pretty good. However, this was compromised of mainly 90s shots.

First time trying out PixInsight, followed a video made by Cuiv, The Lazy Geek. I think it turned out good, although i am struggling with the purple gradient on the corners, if anyone has any suggestions on how to help me with that, please let me know!

Integration: 120s x 45 subs, with flats, darks and biases. Taken with no filter.

PixInsight: Background extraction -> Spectrophotometric colorcalibration -> Graxpert denoise -> statistical stretch -> starnet star removal -> curve transformation.