Nikon D3200 with SkyWatcher 130/650, and a solar filter 20 * 1/250s @ ISO100 Hungary, 2025.08.27 Just tested my gear for the upcoming lunar eclipse, and the sun was the perfect target for it. The dark spot on the surface are the sunspots. The light marks near the edge of the sun are the solar faculae. And the fine structure you see everywhere on the surface are the granules. Its really fascinating how we see the sun almost every day, yet, we never really see how it looks like.

Shot through 25mm eyepiece on a Xiaomi Redmi 10 pro. Celestron Astromaster 130 EQ

Was finally able to stack (didn't understand how to get clean Moon images from Autostakkert)

My attempt on the Pleiades: Untracked, shot with a Sony A7IV and the Sigma 24-70 mm F/2.8 (exposures are shot with 70 mm).

This is a stack of 1250 3.2-second exposures at f/2.8. I've only used Siril for processing (calibration -> background removal -> stacking -> stretch -> green noise removal & color calibration).

I had difficulties processing the amount of pictures, as one set of the 1250 pictures was something between 400 and 500 GB, and due to how Siril works, I always had around 1 TB of data in my Process folder. Because of this, I had to have it on my HDD, which made the whole processing quite slow.

I'm still rather new in this hobby, but I really enjoy it and want to get a tracker, as this is probably the logical next step.

Equipment used: -Skywatcher 72ed (420mm FL) -ZWO UV/IR cut -EQ6R -533MC Pro at -10°c -Explore Scientific Field Flattener -Processed in Pixinsight

I shot this at a campsite just outside of Lynmouth on the border of Exmoor National Park over August Bank Holiday weekend. Annoyingly I forgot to take my tripod so the trees are cutoff disproportionatly due to me shooting on the ground and using a box of cards to angle the camera.

A little bit of post processing on the Lightroom app on my phone as I haven't had time to use my pc process the RAW image. I used the Dark Drama scene at roughly +50 and set Highlights to roughly -50.

Gear: Canon EOS R50, Sigma 16mm F/1.4 Settings: Exposure 20 secs, F/1.4, ISO 1600, White Balance - Auto

NGC 7000 – 404 thirty-second subs with the Seestar S50 in EQ mode.

I’ve been diving headfirst into PixInsight lately, pairing it up with BlurXterminator, NoiseXterminator, and StarXterminator—and the difference is night and day. My old edits feel like rough drafts compared to what these tools can pull out. The result? This new look at the Cygnus Wall, a cosmic cliff inside the North America Nebula (NGC 7000), feels alive in a way my early edits never captured.

The raw data was always there, but now the structure, texture, and depth hit with way more punch. That’s the magic of re-editing—the sky hasn’t changed, but the way I can reveal it has.

Old photons, new vision. 🌌

My first time using a filter. It's a little blurry because I borrowed the camera and I didn't find the live view until after I finished 😅

Equipment: Skywatcher 80ed, EQ6R mount, partially unfiltered Canon 1000D, Ha OIII filter

Process: 157 lights and 37 darks of 1'30" exposure and ISO 1600

In Siril : Pre-processing and creating HOO, HHO and RGB images.

Applied starnet on all images

In Gimp: combined HOO and HHO images and used the RGB image for the stars. Turned up the saturation.

A photo I took while visiting the popular tourist destination

Taken with the Sony A7s3 20s exposure, 3200 iso 20mm f 1.8

Really pleased to have captured LDN 1235 over the past few nights from my backyard. The moon and sky were mostly being kind to me (though there was a night some fog rolled in and I think that's why the stars that make the "eye" look so rough)

Integration: 213x300" (18hr over 3 nights)
Moon : 2% average through the nights
Location : Central Missouri, USA. Bortle 4 backyard
Camera : ZWO ASI533MC Pro
Scope: Sharpstar Optics Askar 71F refractor (I highly recommend this wonderful scope)
Mount : Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro
Filter : Optolong UV/IR
Guiding : ZWO ASI120MM mini + Svbony SV165 mini quide scope.

Stacked and processed in PixInsight with SPCC (Spectro-photometry Color Calibration), BlurXTerminator, NoiseXterminator, Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch (small stretch before removing the stars with StarXterminator), then stretched the dark nebula and background before recombining, and using Curves to boost saturation.

I planned on getting a little more integration, but one of the nights during the meridian flip, the power brick for my ASIAir came loose and was dangling off to the side and it totally ruined guiding. Just 4hr or so of streaky images lol. Easy to troubleshoot at least because when I woke up and saw them I was like "wtf?!"

After I found out that the elephant's trunk was high up in the night sky at this time of the year, I immediately wanted to start photographing it 🤩 The nebula is so beautiful! I'm quite happy with the result after only a couple of hours data. The colour is not calibrated, nor tweaked, I like to keep the raw data coming from the subs.

🧭Star adventurer GTI 🔭Askar SQA55 📷ZWO 2600 MC 🕶️Optolong L-enhance 🦯Svbony guide scope with ZWO camera 💻ASIair

Subs taken during 1 night, bortle 5, almost new moon, 3h combined exposure of 180s subs + calibration shots. Stacked and processed in Siril, with graXpert, Cosmic Clarity, and starnet.

Clear nights!

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)

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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'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

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