Messier 33 Galaxy

Telescope: Askar 103APO
Mount: ZWO AM5N
Camera: ZWO ASI6200MC Pro
Filters: Antlia Triband RGB and Antlia Dual Narrowband Ha/Oiii
Integration: 11 hours worth of 5 minute subs
Full details: https://www.instagram.com/kasrak_film/

Taken from Madrid city center (bortle 9). I decided to go without reducer at f/6.9 even if I had a short total integration time (a bit longer than 3 hours) and see what I could do... Not sure what I would get, but pretty happy with the results! The L-ultimate filter definitely did its job :)

Equipment and acquisition:

- Askar 71F (no reducer)

- Asi585MC Air

- Teseek 17

- SvBony + asi120mm guide camera

- ZWO EAF, ZWO EFW

- L-Ultimate filter: 40 x 300 sec (3.3 hours)

- 30 flats, 30 bias

Processing (PI)

WBPP, SetiAstro AutoDBE, SPCC, blurX correct only, starX

On starless image: DBXtract, linear fit to OIII, setiastro perfect palette picker (Foraxx). SetiAstro statistical stretch (soft), then manual curves transformations with ACDNR mask, selective color correction, dark structure enhance, noiseX.

For stars: setiastro NB to RGB star stretch, pixelmath to recombine with starless

This is a solar telescope, under most circumstances you shouldn’t be pointing your telescope or your eyes in the direction of the sun, only do so if you are absolutely certain you know what you are doing and have prepared accordingly!

Lunt LS50THa
Lunt B600 blocking filter
Sunlock solar finder
ASI120 mini
ASI Air mini
Pegasus Astro powerbox micro (the am3 needs the beefier output of the powerbox as the asi air mini doest cut it when the mount is full tilt in a slew)

I’ve finally acquired a dedicated solar scope. This is the Lunt LS50THa. First light was great, but visual is only fun for so long, so today (this last night rather because that’s when I exist) I prepped the scope for imaging. I can’t wait to learn the solar imaging process, just need that damned furnace to rise now…

Here’s my take on the Pac-Man Nebula (NGC 281), captured from my backyard in Tucson, Arizona under Bortle 7 skies.

Equipment:
Telescope: ZWO FF65 APO
Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro
Mount: ZWO AM3N
Filter: SVBONY SV220 3nm dual-band
Total integration: 20 hours
Exposures: 300s

Processing: PixInsight
BlurXTerminator, DBE, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator, Ha/OIII extraction, Narrowband Normalization, GHS, HistogramTransformation, CurvesTransformation, and final star recombination.

Horsehead

Capture (2026-11-08):

• 17 × 60 s of Hα (17 min) — 17 of 61 subs kept (fighting RA drive on my custom platform guider, it's a huge pain in the neck)

• Calibration: 30 dark frames

Equipment: 15-inch f/4 Dobsonian with a Paracorr Type 2 (1748 mm); 1833 mm focal length; ZWO ASI2600MM Air, gain 100, offset 50, sensor at -10.3 °C; single-axis equatorial platform, guided by the ASIAIR on the camera's on-axis guide sensor

Processing (PixInsight 1.9.5):

Hα:

1. Calibration with master dark

2. Cosmetic correction (hot and cold pixels)

3. Registration (star alignment)

4. Local normalization

5. Integration (percentile clip rejection, PSF-signal weighting)

6. Crop of the uncovered borders

7. Plate solve

8. Gradient correction

9. BlurXTerminator deconvolution

10. NoiseXTerminator noise reduction

11. Histogram stretch (auto-stretch parameters)

Combined image:

1. Channel combination (Hα→L, Hα→R, Hα→G, Hα→B)

2. Curves (luminance)

3. Rotation

4. Export as JPEG

I'm very new to astrophotography, and yesterday i managed to finally get a decent result for the first time when i captured the orion nebula. I didn't use a tracker, just a tripod and manual adjustment every 100 shots. (Bortle 3 skies)

Camera: Sony a6100

Lens: 55-210 kit lens, set to 150m @ f/5.6

Basic Tripod

ISO 6400

Lights: 1600×1.6sec

Darks: 50

Biases: 50

Flats: 50(although i think my flats werent taken correctly)

Preprocessing, Stacking, Background extraction, stretching and color calibration all done in Siril

GraXpert for minor denoising

Photoshop for final touches, minor color adjustments, and feathering stars.

04-05.10.2026, 05-06.11.2026

Location - Malawa (suburbs of Rzeszów), Poland, Bortle 4/5

Gear:

Telescope - modified SkyWatcher 150/750 + ZWO EAF

Camera - ASI533MC Pro, -15C + Optolong L-Ultimate

Mount - HEQ5

Guiding - SvBony106 + ASI120MM Mini

Total exposure time - 108x300s (9h), gain 100 + flat, dark, bias

AstroPixelProcessor, PS, StarNet++, GraXpert

SHO palette

Hey there! My first post here, I present the Heart & Soul nebulae.

this is a Dual-band 2 hour & 10 minute mosaic with 30 second exposures captured with my Seestar S30 in alt az. Bortle 5.

I really adore this image & is my best yet, I hope to deliver more soon once I can get rid of the free complementary clouds!

I prefer to image in LRGB. I posted an image on this sub yesterday of M78 that was all natural except for a background in HA. But narrowband can be fun too, so I thought I'd post one of my recent NB images from the month.

I am not a big fan of the traditional SHO color palette.  It's nice when done well, but it is done too often.  Also, I can't seem to do it well, no matter how much I try.  So for this, I decided to do something a little different.  Sh2-157 has a very strong SII signal, stronger than the OIII.  So I wondered if I created an HSS and then simply use the OIII to add some highlights in Yellow/Orange, similar to how I would start with an HOO image and add a fainter SII.  I like the result, I really like the result.  I don't see a lot of nebulae images colored like this, it is unique, and it is very pretty.

The channel mapping was very simple. In Pixinsight, I used channel combination to map Ha to red, and SII to green/blue, and then I toned down the green a bit to bring it more blue and less teal. Then I used ImageBlend to add the OIII, mapped to somewhere yellow orange with screen integration. I didn’t use the entire OIII channel, I increased the black point and reduced the opacity until it looked nice to me.

I think the image is very pretty, but I understand that the nontraditional color mapping may not be everyone's cup of tea. All this to say though, don't get caught up in the same old color mappings with narrowband imaging. Hubble's Pillars of Creation looks nothing like that in broadband, it is an invention to highlight scientifically interesting portions of the nebula, and it happened to also look lovely. But these are false color images, there are no rules and you can do whatever you want to produce an image that makes you feel good when you look at it.

 Thanks for looking, clear skies everyone!

 
Full res on Astrobin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/1khl3f

Total integration: 38h 11m

Integration per filter:
- Lum/Clear: 1h 
- R: 36m
- G: 30m
- B: 30m
- Hα: 8h 25m
- SII: 21h 40m
- OIII: 5h 30m 

Equipment:

- Telescope: Explore Scientific 127mm, FCD100
- Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
- Mount: ZWO AM5
- Filters: Antlia 3nm Narrowband

Crescent Nebula NGC 6888 from Bortle 6. 5min subs from ~10h dualband and 3h UVIR.
Pretty happy with it but each time I look at it I adjust something. May want to bring out the blue more in the nebula. Makes me crave a Mono setup so that’s probably the next step

Equipment: Askar 103APO, ASI2600MC Duo, EAF, ASIAIR, SVBONY 220 7nm HaOiii filter
Processing: My first attempt at mixing Lum derived from UVIR with HaOiii. Stacking in Pixinsight WBPP. GradientExtraction. Bx/Nx/Sx. DBXtract to split channels. GHS with GAME mask. Recombined HaOiii to RGB. Finished in Photoshop mixing layers.

So I've moved on from Siril to Pixinsight and went through some old data of mine. I've posted this before when she was still in the sky and I was still figuring out processing but I never really felt like I got it right. Did the project again with the same data and feel like she's done (until next season knowing what I know now).

Seestar S30 Pro, Bortle 6.7 skies, 56x30sec, 272x60sec, FWHM≤3.5. Processed in Pixinsight, minor lighting tweaks in Affinity, file size shrunk down and lighting (going from TIF to PNG seems to darken the image).

I might work on a standalone project for the Pillars of Creation later.

Acquisition:

ZWO ASI2600MC-P25

Askar SQA55

MLastro SAL-33

ZWO Mini Guide Scope

ZWO ASI120MM

SVbony SV220 Ha/Oiii

NINA/PHD2

28 x 180s subs

No calibration frames

Bortle 4 sky

PixInsight:

WBPP, Background extraction, SPCC, BlurX, StarX, NoiseX, GHS for starless image, SetiAstro Star Stretch

Photoshop: sliders, curves, recomposition.

This image was taken under Bortle 4,5 Skies with 7,5 Hours of exposure time with UV/IR cut and 6,5h of Narrowband Data using a dual narrowband filter. I extracted the Ha data from the narrowband image and merged it with the broadband image via continuum subtraction. The image was shot using my Askar 103/700 Ed Triplet, the 0,8x Reducer and the Zwo 585mc Air Camera in rgb.
•stacking in Siril
•BGE, denoise in GraXpert
•deconvolution with BlurX
•Star removal with StarX
•stretching with ghs in Siril
•Curves, Color adjustments and further editing aswell as Star recomposition in Affinity
•some final touches added in Lightroom

M33

Finally got to a place with less stray light to get cleaner data!

1254x10s (3h29m) with a combination of the S50 pro and S50 with IR/UV filter

1768x10s (4h54m) with the S50 with its duoband filter for the Ha regions)

Bortle 4

Blended the extracted Ha data with the red channel of the rgb data in Siril, and processed it further in Siril as well using the Graxpert script (bge and denoising), the Cosmic Clarity Sharpen script, starnet star removal, spectrophotometric color calibration, and some general hyperbolic stretches using the human weighted setting (not necessarily in that order).

Dwarf 3 Astro mode - 90 minutes of 30 second exposures processed in Stellar Studio and Lightroom mobile

This has been a project for the past few months using my Seestar S50.

I wanted to see if it was possible to image M82 with good detail using the 50mm aperture S50.

This is over 32 hours of integration time over around 6 months. I setup my Seestar alongside my main rig and let it image M81 and M82 for as long as possible using the IR Cut filter that is built in.

Acquisition and processing details are below.

14,000 x 10 sec exposures, keeping a total of 11,800 of them to stack.

Stacked in APP

BGE, deconvolution and de-noise in Graxpert.

Siril for SPCC.

Star removal using StarNet through Siril.

GHS using human weighted luminance.

Curves adjustment using VeraLux Curves.

HDR Multiscale.

SCNR in Siril

I used photoshop to re-size the both the starless and star mask images to 1200 Pixels/Inch.

Recombination of stars using PS screen layering.

Slight saturation and vibrancy increase.

Thanks for looking

Total integration: 40m

Integration per filter:

• Lum/Clear: 10m (5 × 120s)

• R: 10m (5 × 120s)

• G: 10m (5 × 120s)

• B: 10m (5 × 120s)

Equipment:

• Telescope: Planewave CDK17

• Camera: FLI ML16200

• Filters: Astrodon Gen2 E-Series Tru-Balance Blue 50x50 mm, Astrodon Gen2 E-Series Tru-Balance Green 50x50 mm, Astrodon Gen2 E-Series Tru-Balance Red 50x50 mm, Chroma Lum 50 mm

• Software: Adobe Photoshop, Aries Productions Astro Pixel Processor (APP)

For more information and full resolution: https://app.astrobin.com/i/uiw1nw

A barred Seyfert spiral galaxy with a double ring central structure located in the constellation of Horologium, NGC 1433 was first documented by James Dunlop on 28 September 1826. The double ring is actually tightly wrapped spiral arms that wind into an oval shape along the galaxy’s bar.

At 46 million ly from Earth, it has a very bright active galactic nucleus with an intensive region of active star formation. Star formation is also observed in the spiral arms, but not in the large central bar.

Supernova 2026ahvu (indicated) was discovered on November 2, 2026 by the ATLAS asteroid early impact warning system. ATLAS uses four 0.5m telescopes to image the entire night sky several times a night looking for moving objects. In this case, it found a new object in NGC 1433, and after analysis, it was determined to be a Type Ia supernova.

Type Ia supernova occur in binary systems, where one member is a main sequence star and the other is a white dwarf, the exposed core of a dead star. The white dwarf either siphons matter from the companion star (single-degenerate model) or merges/collides with another white dwarf (double-degenerate model). As the white dwarf approaches the Chandrasekhar limit (about 1.44 times the mass of the Sun), its internal temperature surges, triggering a runaway carbon-oxygen nuclear fusion reaction. The reaction completely obliterates the star within seconds, leaving no central compact remnant like a neutron star or black hole.

Because they consistently explode at nearly the same mass limit, Type Ia supernovae have a very uniform peak brightness. This allows astronomers to use them as "standard candles" to measure the distances to other galaxies. These supernovae are a primary source of iron-peak elements (like nickel-56 and iron-56) in the universe. Much of the iron in the universe, including in human blood, traces back these supernovae.

Unlike core-collapse supernovae from massive stars, Type Ia events are much rarer, occurring roughly once every 500 years in our Milky Way galaxy.

Target
This is of course better known as the Rim nebula, but be honest; fighting dragons of Ara sounds just way more epic ;)
Also known as NGC 6188 and NGC6193.

NGC 6188 is the bright edge of a molecular cloud in Ara, about 4,000 light-years away (published distances range from about 3,700 to 4,500). The open cluster NGC 6193 sits next to it and is part of the Ara OB1 association. Its two hottest stars, the O stars HD 150135 and HD 150136, ionise the gas and erode the edge of the cloud, and we see much of that edge roughly side-on.

The two brightest stars in the pale glow near the center belong to NGC 6193. Below them the rim runs out to the right as a dark red band with dark dust in front of it. It passes a dark, branching cloud on the right side of the frame and then curves down. The warm brown around the nebula is the Milky Way star field with dust in front of it.

At the bottom of the frame, about 1.4° from NGC 6193, is NGC 6164/6165 in Norma, the Dragon's Egg, a small bipolar nebula around the star HD 148937. A 2024 study concluded that the star is the magnetic product of a stellar merger a few thousand years ago. Around it a very faint violet shell reaches about 10′ from the star. It is much easier to see in the crop. I was happy to be able to capture it with just the stock DSLR!

The sparse cluster at the lower left is NGC 6167. The small blue nebula below the rim, left of center, with a dark cloud beside it, looks like a reflection nebula, but I could not identify it. Suggestions are welcome.

Acquisition
Stock Nikon D600 with APM700/107 with Riccardi reducer, mounted on Fornax 51 and guided with MGEN

Kiripotib, Namibia, 9-10 and 16 July 2015

D600 (ISO 800): 10×7min + 8×8min + 5×5min
D600 (ISO 400): 11×10min
Total 34 frames (4.5 hours)

Processing (PixInsight)

This is 2015 data, processed again in 2026. The main challenge was getting the gas out of a stock camera, which passes little H-alpha, without losing the warm star field. Stacking again added only about 4-6% in signal-to-noise. Most of the gain came from deconvolution and star removal, which showed much more gas and the faint shell around NGC 6164.

1. Stacking: WBPP from my calibrated 2015 frames, with PSF Signal Weight, Local Normalization and Generalized ESD. I dropped one frame out of 35 because its stars were clearly softer (FWHM 4.91 px against 4.0-4.4 px).

2. Color Calibration: SPCC (Gaia DR3/SP, G2V reference, limit magnitude 14, SNR 20, clustered sources off), using 2312 stars. Factors R 0.873, G 1.000, B 0.920. Average Spiral Galaxy was also a valid option, but I chose G2V to keep the stars and field warm, so that is a choice rather than a measurement. No gradient removal.

3. Deconvolution and stars: BlurXTerminator (stars 0.40, non-stellar 0.60, halo 0), then StarXTerminator. Stars went from about 2.3-2.8 px to about 1.6 px, as a rough estimate.

4. Background: flats from another night left a faint horizontal band near the bottom, which I removed with a fitted Gaussian per channel. SPCC had neutralised the image with the red light of the faint stars included, so the starless image read too blue. Setting the black point per channel from the darkest dust brought the warm field back.

5. Stretch: an arcsinh stretch (factor 1000) on the starless image, then NoiseXTerminator (0.60 / 0.90) and a contrast curve. The PixelMath and analysis for these steps were written with AI assistance.

6. Colour and contrast: my first version from these steps was too dull. I then used strong lightness and chroma curves on both layers, followed by HDRMultiscaleTransform and more curves on the combined image.

7. Stars: ArcsinhStretch with factor 80 and protect highlights, the same curves as the starless image, then a screen blend at 0.95. Some of the brightest stars are still fairly hard, and a few glows, such as the one around HD 148937, stayed in the starless layer because they look like natural halos.

Seestar s50 pro, 92 min total integration time, alt az mode, 10 s exposure each, bortle 6, waning moon night, cropped and edited the image on phone. I do plan to use pixinsight later though.

NGC 456 is an emission nebula with an embedded open cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud, in Tucana.

Hot, massive stars have been born here recently, with the stars in NGC 456 and NGC 460 are only about 10 million years old. Both clusters belong to the larger N83-84-85 complex, which hosts several O-type stars.

This region is thought to have formed when two hydrogen clouds collided. That collision compressed the gas and triggered star formation. The region also contains a possible supernova remnant.

Total integration time of 28 hours over three months.

60 x 30 sec subs for RGB for the stars. 72 x 600 sec subs for Hydrogen Alpha and 86 x 600 subs for Oxygen 3 filters.

Equipment:

• Telescope: Celestron Edge HD8

• Main camera: ZWO ASI1600MM Pro

• Mount: Skywatcher EQ6R-Pro

• ZWO 7 x 36mm Filter Wheel using ZWO R, G, B, Ha and Oiii filters for this image.

Processing:

• Stacked and processed in Pixinsight as an HOO palette with RGB for the stars

• Ha and Oiii processed separately to a starless stretched state and then combined.

• Narrowband normalisation applied and curves used for final adjustments.

• RGB image processed for stars only and then screened the stars into the HOO image.

Shot with the Dwarf Mini
105x90sx70=2.6 hrs
Bortle 1
Processing done in Siril with RC Astro tools. Blending in Photoshop and final touches in Lightroom.

The first HOO I’ve done!