They actually just got rid of the stars, now you just tip people

https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/16ryhv9/celebrating_great_content_is_as_good_as_gold/

Bye, Bob :-(

Holy shit this was the most awesome thing I've ever experienced. I've been prepping for this eclipse ever since I got clouded out at the last minute for the 2017 eclipse, and almost everything went perfectly! (I didn't even hit eclipse traffic on the way home!) With the camera automated I got 163 HDR pics during totality, plus more from the partial phases, so expect to see some more pics in the coming weeks!

I really like how the diffraction spikes turned out from the Bailey's Beads, and how the blue turned out in my totality pics. I tried to keep the editing minimal on this, and just did some minor contrast and saturation adjustments (see below for more details). The corona in the image is definitely bluer than how it looked irl (which was mostly just white), but the prominence color is pretty close to what I saw through my other scope. I suspect it's because of the custom white balance I've had to use for my astro modded cam. For those curious here are my other C2 pics, unedited other than cropping

Captured on April 8th, 2024 from Sikeston, MO.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• Canon T3i (Ha modded)

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition:

• Single 1/4000" exposure at ISO 100

Capture Software:

• Eclipse Orchestrator Free for automating the capture sequence

• NINA for controlling the mount and autofocuser

Photoshop processing:

• Just a crop, and some minor adjustments to exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, and blacks

https://github.com/Balackburn/Apollo

You'll have to install AltStore (or Sideloady) on your computer + phone to resign the app each week (this can happen automatically if they're on the same wifi network). You can make your own personal API key at https://old.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ (It's limited to 100 requests per 10 mins, which you wont run into browsing by yourself). Also as long as you moderate a subreddit (I think even if it's just an empty one you make), NSFW content wont be blocked on the API.

Also while you're sideloading, I'd highly recommend uYouPlus for a better youtube app

This is a photo from a lunar transit of the space station a few years ago. I had another telescope setup to take a video of the pass, and here's a composite of the frames it took (the whole thing lasted less than a second).

I really enjoy the scale of this image, with the ISS being 540km away, and the moon some 380,000km in the background. more detailed info on the ISS Transit ISS transit can be found here courtesy of transit-finder. Captured on the morning of June 24, 2019 about 30 minutes after sunrise.

Equipment:

• Meade ETX125-EC

• AW 71" Camera Tripod

• Canon Rebel T3i (astro-modified)

• Meade #64 adapter

Acquisition:

• 1/800" at ISO 800 single exposure

Capture:

• I just held down the shutter button a second before the ISS pass occurred, and got 3 frames containing the ISS

Processing:

• AutoColor and Levels adjustments in Photoshop

• MLT noise reduction and annotation in PixInsight

Finally done with classes and I got some time to at least star processing my pics. Gonna be a while before I figure out all the HDR stuff, so here's a pic of the prominences about 10 seconds before C3. It was absolutely nutty seeing them naked eye during the eclipse, and visually through my other telescope. Captured on April 8th, 2024 from Sikeston, MO.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• Canon T3i (Ha modded)

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition:

• Single 1/4000" exposure at ISO 100

Capture Software:

• Eclipse Orchestrator Free for automating the capture sequence

• NINA for controlling the mount and autofocuser

Photoshop processing:

• Crop, and some minor adjustments to exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, and blacks, and slight S curve

Refreshing the ublock caches work most of the time however if it doesn’t, clicking the share button and then ‘embed’ just brings up a regular non-blocked video player

This is one of my longer projects, with 84 hours of long exposure time over 2 seasons going into this photo. Sh2-224 is an extremely faint nebula, and this is what a single 10 minute long exposure (through a Ha narrowband filter) of it looks like. I ended up getting ~83 hours of narrowband exposures like this, plus about an hour of RGB images for the stars. Because it's so faint, if the moon was up at all I did not shoot it, which cut the number of clear nights I could reasonably image it in half. The nebula itself is false color (although the HOO palette I used is fairly close to natural color), the stars were taken with RGB filters and are true color. With this project I finally managed to learn how to do some starless processing techniques for combining the stars+nebula

Captured over 27 nights between February 2021 and April 2022, from my Bortle 6 driveway

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 83 hours 52 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)

• Ha - 266x600"

• Oiii - 231x600"

• Red- 14x90"

• Green- 14x90"

• Blue- 14x90"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• SubframeSelector

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

Narrowband processing:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtractions

• NoiseXTerminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars for starless processing

to be later replaced by RGB stars. doing this allows the nebula to be stretched without worrying about blowing out stars

• HistogramTransformations to stretch nonlinear

RGB Linear Processing:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtractions

• ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R, G, and B frames into color image

• PhotometricColorCalibration

• Slight SCNR Green

• HSV Repair

super useful for putting color back into blown out star cores

• StarXterminator to generate stars only image

basically just getting rid of the background

• ArcsinhStretch + Histogram transformation to stretch nonlinear

Combining Channels:

• ChannelCombination to combine stretched Ha and Oiii images into color image

Ha mapped to red channel, Oiii to Green and Blue

• HistogramTransformation to re-linearize HOO and RGB stars images

• PixelMath to add RGB stars only image to starless HOO image

HOO + Stars the math was simple

• HistogramTransformation to bring HOO+Stars pic back to nonlinear state

Nonlinear:

• Shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast, hues, etc. with various masks

• ColorSaturation to selective saturate/desaturate specific hues

• More curves

• Slight SCNR Green

• NoiseXterminator

• LRGBCombination with extracted L as luminance, used for chrominance noise reduction

• even more curves

• color saturation again

• SCNR to remove some green star color

• EZ star reduction

• NoiseGenerator to add noise into reduced star areas

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• guess what baby more curves!

• Extract L --> LRGBCombination again with mask for larger scale background chrominance noise reduction

• Resample to 70%

• Annotation

Oh no! Where will I go to see OF spam bots now???

Although the Orion Nebula is a popular beginner astrophotography target, it can be difficult to shoot because of the bright core. Combining images with different exposure lengths into an HDR image is necessary in order to properly expose for the faint dust surrounding M42 and the bright nebulosity near the trapezium cluster in the core. I opted to go for a more subtle HDR look with this one, which I think is more visually pleasing than some other overcooked HDR images (aka my previous attempt at it). Also for those interested I made a short time lapse of my telescope in action photographing this. Captured on January 22, 23, and February 7th, 2021 from a Bortle 6 zone (Probably higher local bortle level due to streetlamp at the south end of my driveway)

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 5 hours 54 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)

• L- 109x120" + 50x15" + 50x5"

• R- 23x120" + 25x15"

• G- 23x120" + 25x15"

• B- 22x120" + 25x15"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration per stack per channel (2x, Var β=1.5)

• HDRComposition per filter to make 64-bit HDR images

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

Luminance:

• EZ Deconvolution

• EZ Denoise

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to make nonlinear

RGB:

• ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R, G, and B HDR stacks into color image

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

• PhotometricColorCalibration

• SCNR to partially remove greens

• HSV repair to saturate clipped star cores

• Linked STF applied via HistogramTransformation to make nonlinear

Nonlinear:

• EZ HDR applied to reveal detail in blown out core per Luminance and RGB images

I opted to only mix 10% of the HDR image back in the original luminance. Wanted to go with a more subtle HDR look that didn't feel too 'overcooked' while keeping some of the nebulosity near the trapezium visible in the final image.

• LRGBCombination to add lum image as a luminance layer to the RGB image

• CurveTransformation to adjust lightness, contrast, and saturation

• ACDNR

• LocalHistogramTransformation

• HistogramTransformation to slightly stretch image

• Another Curve for saturation boost

• EZ Star Reduction

• Resample to 78%

• Annotation

The saturation is increased, but looking at the moon through a telescope you can barely see some faint blue/tan colorations that line up with this pic. The blue areas have more titanium minerals and the tan/orange areas have more iron

So it turns out camera sensors are perfectly fine being exposed to the last ~20 seconds of sunlight before an eclipse. I’ve decided that if I still have this cam in 2045 I’m going to sacrifice it to the sun by not putting the filter back on after totality, and letting it document its own demise.

They shut it down last September. It’s nsfw spinoff redgifs is still up.

It’s at least possible to sideload Apollo and use your own API key for it.

Went out to a darksite and tried snapping some milky way pics with my DSLR while the main telescope rig was doing its thing. Pretty pleased with how this turned out since I don't really do widefield imaging, and it's only 5 minutes of total exposure time (yes I know the stars are trailed 15" exposures were too long in hindsight). The milky way core is home to many different deep sky objects, including all of these that I've shot before, and a bunch more that I haven't photographed yet. Captured on July 18th, 2023 from the Deerlick Astronomy Village (bortle 3 zone)

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• Canon T3i (astro-modded)

• Tamron 17-50mm lens

• Joby 3K tripod planted firmly on top of a RAV4

Acquisition: 5 minutes (17mm f/2.8 ISO 800)

• 20x15"

• Darks- 10

Capture Software:

• Captured using my finger on the shutter button

PixInsight Processing

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, var β=1.5)

• DynamicCrop to remove blurred trees at the bottom

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• SCNR green

• ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear

• Shitloads of curves to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast etc with varying luminance/star masks

• MMT for large scale chrominance noise reduction

• NoiseXTerminator

• Invert > SCNR >invert > SCNR to remove excess green and magentas

• more curves

• DarkStructureEnhance

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• EZ Star reduction

• NoiseGenerator to add noise back into star reduced areas

• DynamicCrop again

• Resample to 60%

• Annotation

I shot the Owl Nebula (M97) a few months ago, and barely had the Surfboard galaxy (M108) in frame. Since I shot it in narrowband, I decided to combine it with some old data I shot back back in 2021 as there's very little narrowband signal in the galaxy. So while M108 and the stars are true color, M98 in this pic is technically false color (although kinda close if you compare it to the 2021 pic. I think this does a great job of showing how much my processing has improved in the last 2 years, as the datasets for the galaxy and stars are identical. There's also a number of faint background galaxies in the pic.

Narrowband images were shot from a bortle Bortle 9 zone in July 2023, and the boradband was from Bortle 6 in March 2021.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 15 hours 38 minutes (Camera at -15°C, unity gain)

• Ha - 43x360

• L - 91x120"

• R - 29x120"

• G - 29x120"

• B - 29x120"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel per panel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• StarAlign to new Ha and Oiii stacks

• Dynamic Crop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction 2x

Luminance Linear:

• BlurXterminator

• NoiseXterminator

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch to nonlinear

Narrowband:

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch to nonlinear

• PixelMath to combine Ha and Oiii images into bicolor pic (used /u/DreamsPlease's formula)

R = iif(Ha > .15, Ha, (Ha*.8)+(Oiii*.2))

G = iif(Ha > 0.5, 1-(1-Oiii)*(1-(Ha-0.5)), Oiii *(Ha+0.5))

B = iif(Oiii > .1, Oiii, (Ha*.3)+(Oiii*.2))

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars

• BackgroundNeutralization

• Small stretches with HT

• NoiseXterminator

• Curve adjustments

RGB Linear:

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• Slight SCNR Green

• HSV repair

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch to nonlinear

• LRGBCombination with stretched luminance as L

• Various curve adjustments for lightness, contrast, hue, saturation, etc (with varying lum/star masks)

• PixelMath to add narrowband (this really only affected/overlaid the Owl nebula on top, not touching the stars, galaxy, or background)

Max(RGB , Bicolor)

• NoiseXterminator

• More curves

• invert > SCNR > invert to remove magentas from the background

• LocalHistogramEqualization (2 round of this at kernel 16 and 74 to affect different sized structures)

• MLT/SCNR for chrominance noise reduction in the galaxy

• DarkStructureEnhance

• BlurXterminator for star sharpening

• ColorSaturation

• final curves

• Resample to 70%

• FastRotation

• Annotation

This target has always been a goal of mine since starting in this hobby. While the Flying Nebula (aka Sh2-129, all the red stuff), the Squid Nebula (aka OU4, the blue stuff) was only discovered in 2011. It's stupidly faint. Because of this, and my horrible light pollution, I had to get a ton of exposure time to bring it out, and ended up getting 110 hours total time on it. This is a combination of images taken through hydrogen-alpha and oxygen-iii filters for the nebulosity, plus RGB filters for true-color stars (the nebulosity is kinda close to true color). I have no clue why the Ha region is called 'the flying bat', but the Oiii structure sure looks like a squid alright.

Captured over a shitload of nights from September to December, 2023. Broadband data from a Bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 110 hours 15 minutes (Camera at -15°C)

BB exposures at half unity gain (76/15), Ha at unity gain (139/21)

• Ha - 212x600"

• Oiii - 428

• L - 200x120"

• R - 69x60" 69 71 66

• G - 71x60"

• B - 66x60"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

**Narrowband Linear:

• Honestly just StarXterminator and EZ soft stretch to bring them nonlinear.

• Duplicated the Oiii before stretching to be used for advanced narrowband combination:

Oiii advaned narrowband combination:

These steps largely follow the ones in Jimmy/NightPhoton's advanced narrowband combination guide.

• Combine Oiii with Green broadband channel channel (OGG palette)

• BackgroundNeutralization

• ColorCalibration

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars

• PixelMath to subtract green continuum spectrum, leaving just Oiii signal

• HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

• NoiseXterminator + a little concolution

• CurvesTransformation to adjust black point/contrast

• Clone stamp to remove a couple background artifacts

• image saved as 'NB', to be combined later on in nonlinear processing

RGB Linear:

this is really just to have natural star colors

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• BlurXTerminator

Really loving the star correction with its new AI v4 update

• HSV Repair

• StarXterminator to make a stars-only image

• ArcsinhStretch + Histogram transformation to bring stars nonlinear

Nonlinear processing:

• Combined stretched Ha and Oiii images into a color image using ForaxX's HOO palette:

R = Ha

G= ((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Ha + ~((Oiii*Ha)^(Oiii*Ha))*Oiii

Oiii

• Background Neutralization

• Shitloads of Curve Transformation to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast, hues, etc with various masks

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• Added in NB image from earlier per the advanced narrowband guide

  only difference from the pixelmath in the guide is that I added NB to the green and blue channels (0.6 and 0.9, respectively) instead of red

• HistogramTransformation to adjust the black point

• More curves

• MLT for medium scale noise reduction in the squid

• ColorSaturation to slightly desaturate the red nebulas

• NoiseXterminator

• Even more curves

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched stars only image from earlier

This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before

(Jimmy is a processing wizard when it comes to writing up this independent starless processing stuff)

mtf(.005,

mtf(.995,Stars)+

mtf(.995,Starless))

• Guess what more curves

• Another round of NoiseXterminator

• MLT for some small scale chrominance noise reduction

• Few more slight ColorSaturation adjustments

• Resample to 60%

• Annotation

It may not be as big or well known as the other well known cluster in Hercules (M13), but it sure looks nice. Captured over 4 nights in July/August 2024 from a Bortle 9 zone

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 6 hours 55 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)

• Lum - 209x60"

• Red - 78x60"

• Green - 62x60"

• Blue - 66x60"

• Flats- 30 per filter

• 24 JimmyFlats per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing (with premade JimmyFlats)

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

Luminance:

• BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

RGB:

• ChannelCombinaiton to combine monochrome R, G, B stacks into color image

• BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

• Curves to saturate it a little

• MLT for large scale chrominance noise reduction

Nonlinear:

• LRGBCombination with stretched L as luminance

• DeepSNR Noise reduction

• Several CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc.

• Invert > SCNR > invert > SCNR to remove some greens and magentas

• More curves

• A little bit of noiseXterminator

• DynamicCrop in on the clustert

• Resample to 75%

• Annotation

The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/4039) are a pair of colliding galaxies about 65 million ly away. The collision over the last few hundred million years has resulted in streams of ejected stars, forming the 'antennae'. Despite having guide camera issues for the first hour of the night, and horrific seeing/guiding error/HFR values, this somehow turned out decent. I've also made an annotated version which highlights background galaxies in the uncropped FOV.

Captured on April 20th, 2023 from the Deerlick Astronomy Village (Bortle 3)

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120mc 290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 3 hours 52 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)

• L- 55x120"

• R - 21x120"

• G - 21x120"

• B - 19x120"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing

• BatchPreProcessing

• SubframeSelector

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

Luminance Linear:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

• BlurXTerminator (i caved)

• NoiseXterminator

• ArcsinhStretch+HistogramTransformation to bring nonlinear

RGB Linear:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

• ChannelCombination

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• HSV Repair

• AcrsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

Nonlinear:

• added stretched luminance to stretched RGB via LRGBCombination

• DeepSNR

• shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust hue, lightness, saturation, etc. (some with star masks)

• more curves

• LocalHistogramTransformation

Two round of this: one at kernel radius 16 for the finer 'feathery' details and one at 200 something for larger structures

• SCNR green

• CloneStamp to remove one weirdly saturated Ha region (it looked bad)

• even more curves

• NoiseX

• UnsharpMask

• curves!

• BlurXTerminator (star reduction only)

• MLT for chrominance noise reduction

• guess what more curves

• final curves

• Resample to 70%

• DynamicCrop again

• annotation

This is already the highest res (at least in terms of being zoomed in), but here's the entire uncropped photo

So this is my third time shooting NGC 7380 (previous pics were from 2018 and 2020). This time around I decided to go with a different false-color palette (exact details below) compared to my prior true color and Hubble palette pics. Captured over 4 nights in Nov/Dec, 2023 from a Bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 12 hours 48minutes (Camera at unity gain, -15°C)

• Ha - 33x360"

• Oiii - 52x360"

• Sii - 43x360"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight processing:

Preprocessing

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel per panel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5) per panel per channel

• StarAlignment in mosaic mode to align the two panels, then GradientMergeMosaic to combine them

Linear:

• DynamicBackground Extraction

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

• BlurXTerminator

• NoiseXterminator

• Duplicated images, to be used later for stars only processing

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to bring nonlinear

Stars processing:

• Extracted stars-only pic using StarXterminator

• Pixelmath to make color SHO --> RGB image

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration (narrowband working mode)

• ArcsinhStretch + HT to bring nonlinear

• SCNR > invert > SCNR >invert to remove greens and magentas from stars

• Stars only pic saved for later addition to starless pic

Nonlinear:

• StarX to remove all stars

• PixelMath to create color image in OSH --> RGB palette

• PixelMath to make a second image using Jimmy's Royal Palette:

  R = 0.3*Oiii+0.7*(Oiii^~(0.7*Ha+0.3*Sii))^1.2

  G = ((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Ha + ~((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Sii

  B = 0.9*Sii+Ha-Oiii

• PixelMath to blend OSH and Jimmy pics together 50:50

• LRGBCombination using stretched Ha as luminance

• shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust hue, lightness, saturation, etc. (some with lum masks)

• another round of NoiseXTerminator

• Extract L --> LRGBCombination for chrominance noise reduction

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• More curves

• MultiscaleLinearTransform

• Relinearized narrowband and stars images to add in the stars only image

"unstretched" both images with histogramtransformation midtones set to 0.9999

pixelmath to just add those two images together

histogramtransformation to un-relinearize them by setting midtones to 0.0001

• Even more curves

• Resample to 60%

• annotation

But if a plug but !astrophotography@lemmy.world if you like space pics taken by amateurs

Shot this back in the spring and forgot it was sitting unprocessed on my computer until now. This photo has had the saturation increased to highlight the differences in the lunar soil, which are barely noticeable to the eye when viewed through larger telescopes (usually in Mare Serenitatis or Mare Imbrium for me, at least). Tan/orange indicates iron rich minerals, and blue indicates titanium rich minerals. Captured at early in the morning on March 29th, 2023.

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: (Camera at Unity Gain, -15°C)

• R - 1000 x 2.5ms

• G - 1000 x 2.2ms

• B - 1000 x 3.6ms

Capture Software:

• Captured using Sharpcap and N.I.N.A. for mount/filterwheel control

Stacking:

• Stacked the best 15% of frames in Autostakkert (autosharpened, 3X Drizzle)

PixInsight Processing:

• DynamicCrop

• ChannelCombination to combine monochrome images into RGB image

• ChannelMatch to align G and B colorchannels to red

• ColorCalibration

• HistogramTransformation (slight stretch, also applied to red stack)

• LRGBCombination using red stack as luminance

• CurvesTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc.

• SCNR green (a little)> invert > SCNR (a lot) > invert

• ColorSaturation to desaturatered color fringing around some of the craters

• UnsharpMask for additional sharpening

• LocalHistogramTransformation

• MLT noise reduction

• more curves

• Annotation

Mercury would be a denser propellant than xenon/other Nobel gasses used for ion thrusters in orbit. There’s been a ton of other insane fuel types proposed over the years which thankfully haven’t been used (although a lot of rockets have and still use toxic hypergolic fuels like hydrazine)

Good vid going over some of these fuels: https://youtu.be/_wLk2j7_KB0

I ended up getting their PM. I’m not touching their stock with a 20ft pole.

Sure!

With tomorrow's annular eclipse I figured I'd share my shot of the last solar eclipse over the America (please use eclipse glasses if you're looking at tomorrow's eclipse. There's no totality period where it is safe to look directly at the sun.)

I had my camera set up to take about 200 photos of totality, but it got cloudy about 15 minutes before totality, and this was the best photo from the bunch. If you look close you can see spme solar prominences at the 12 and 2 o'clock positions. Captured on August 21st 2017.

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
• Orion Sirius EQ-G
• Canon Rebel T3 (Full Spectrum modified)
• High Point Scientific 2" coma corrector

Acquisition:

• Lights- 1/8" at ISO 200

Capture Software:

• AstroPhotography Tool

Photoshop Processing:

• Auto Color
• Export as .png

Went to visit my in-laws and and took advantage of their dark skies and (fairly) new moon. I wanted to shoot other targets throughout the night but fog or clouds came in every night around midnight. Overall I'd consider this image an improvement from my first attempt at M33 back in 2018.

This image was taken with a monochrome camera through filters for luminance (all visible light), red, green, blue, and Hydrogen-alpha (656nm), which were combined into a true color image. The Hydrogen-alpha was combined with the RGB data (described below) to enhance the hydrogen nebulae in the galaxy (all the pink splotches in the spiral arms). Captured on October 8-10, 2021 from a bortle 4 zone (Ha data from my bortle 6 driveway on the 12th).

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 11 hours 53 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -15°C)

• Lum - 103x180"

• Ha - 16x300"

• Red - 36x180"

• Green - 36x180"

• Blue - 36x180"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• SubframeSelector

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

Luminance:

• EZ Decon + Denoise

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

RGB:

• ChannelCombinaiton to combine monochrome R, G, B stacks into color image

• PhotometricColorCalibration

• SCNR green

Adding Ha:

I followed this tutorial which does a great job explaining how to isolate and enhance just the Ha signal

http://www.arciereceleste.it/tutorial-pixinsight/cat-tutorial-eng/85-enhance-galaxy-ha-eng

• PixelMath to make Clean Ha. This effectively isolates just the Ha regions from the red continuum spectrum

Ha-Q * (Red-med (Red))

Q=0.08

• PixelMath to combine Clean Ha

• PixelMath to add Ha to RGB image ($T)

R= $T+B*(Ha_Clean - med(Ha_Clean))

G= $T

B= $T+B*0.2*(Ha_Clean - med(Ha_Clean))

B=3

HaRGB:

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

Nonlinear:

• LRGBCombination with nonlinear L as luminance

• LRGBCombination again with galaxy masked, chrominance noise reduction applied to background

• HistogramTransformation to lower black point

• ColorSaturation to slightly desaturate Ha regions (clean Ha mask used)

• Shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc. (various masks used)

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• ACDNR

• Extract L channel > LRGBC again for chrominance noise reduction in the galaxy itself

• EZ StarReduction

• NoiseGenerator to add noise back into reduced stars

• More Curves

• Another round of LHE, smaller kernel radius this time

• Even more curves

• DynamicCrop to 16:9 aspect ratio

• Resample to 60%

• Annotation

A few years ago I shot just the core of NGC7822, and I've decided to reshoot it as a 2 panel mosaic to get some of the outer structures. The whole nebula is actually pretty big in the sky (over 3 degrees!), but I did not want to deal with processing another 8+ panel mosaic to fit the whole thing.

Captured over 23 nights from September through November, 2023 from a Bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 51 hours 30 minutes (Camera at -15°C)

• Left panel:

• Ha - 54x360"

• Oiii - 130x360"

• Sii - 101x360"

• Right Panel:

• Ha - 46x360"

• Oiii - 94x360"

• Sii - 90x360"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight processing:

Preprocessing

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel per panel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5) per panel per channel

• StarAlignment in mosaic mode to align the two panels, then GradientMergeMosaic to combine them

Linear:

• DynamicBackground Extraction

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

• BlurXTerminator

• NoiseXterminator

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to bring nonlinear

Nonlinear:

• PixelMath to combine stretched narrowband masters into color image

SHO --> RGB (classic Hubble Palette)

• removed stars and processed stars-only image separately with invert>SCNR and curve adjustments, to be added to starless image later.

• HistogramTransformations to adjust channel intensities

• Invert > SCNR > Invert to remove magentas

• CurveTransformations for slight hue adjustments

• LRGBCombination using stretched Ha as luminance

• shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust hue, lightness, saturation, etc. (some with lum masks)

• MLT chrominance noise reduction

• NoiseXTerminator

• LocalHistogramEqualization

Two round of this: one at kernel radius 16 for the finer 'feathery' details and one at 512+ for larger structures

• More curves

• Relinearized narrowband and stars images to add in the stars only image

"unstretched" both images with histogramtransformation midtones set to 0.9999

pixelmath to just add those two images together

histogramtransformation to un-relinearize them by setting midtones to 0.0001

• ColorSaturation

• Even more curves

• Extract L > LRGBCombination for some chrominance noise reduction

• Slight SCNR to remove some greens from the bright parts of the nebula

• DynamicCrop to remove a few artifacts around the edge where the panels overlap

• Resample to 60%

• annotation

M17 is also known as The Swan Nebula (the bright core is swan shaped, esp when viewed visually through a telescope). Also pictured it the M18 star cluster off to the right.

I originally shot this back in 2019 and decided to reprocess it since we have fun new tools and techniques (and I kinda know what I'm doing now with narrowband processing). I decided to keep the palettes similar overall, but with a less agressive stretch and more 'natural' look to the nebula. The noise reduction is a lot better when comparing the images at 1:1 (long gone are the days of TGV/MMT noise reduction!). Captured over 2 nights at the in May, 2019 from a Bortle 7 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 8 hours 10 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -15°C)

• Ha- 42x300"

• Oiii- 56x300”

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• EQMod mount control. Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2X, VarK 1.5)

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

Narrowband Linear:

• BlurXTerminator

• NoiseXTerminator

• STF Applied via HT to stretch nonlinear

Nonlinear:

• PixelMath to combine monochrone Ha and Oiii channels into color image (using ForaxX's bicolor palette):

R = Ha

G= ((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Ha + ~((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Oiii

B = Oiii

• SCNR Green

• LRGBCombination with stretched Ha as luminance

• Shitloads of curve transformations to adjust lightness, contrast, hues, saturation, etc

• LocalHistoGramEqualization 2x - one at scale 16 for fine details and one at 512 for large structures

• More curves

• DarkStructureEnhance

• MLT for small scale chrominance noise reduction

• NoiseXTerminator

• Even more curves, some masked to just the core of the nebula

• Resample to 60%

• Annotation

I shot this mostly just to have a true color photo of M52, since my last go at it in 2019 was done in narrowband, with typical ugly narrowband stars. Captured on July 18th, 2023 from the Deerlick Astronomy Village (bortle 3 zone)

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 2 hours 2 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)

• L- 30x120"

• R - 11x120"

• G - 10x120"

• B - 10x120"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, var β=1.5)

Luminance Linear:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

• BlurXTerminator

• NoiseXterminator

• ArcsinhStretch+HistogramTransformation to bring nonlinear

RGB Linear:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

• ChannelCombination

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• HSV Repair

• Slight SCNR green

• DeepSNR

• AcrsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

Nonlinear:

• added stretched luminance to stretched RGB via LRGBCombination

• shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust hue, lightness, saturation, etc. (some with lum masks)

• DeepSNR

• MLT Chrominance noise reduction

• LocalHistogramTransformation

• more curves

• SCNR

• BlurX for star reduction

• even more curves

• Resample to 60%

• annotation

Kinda as a joke I designed a house for astrophotography in sweethome 3D. You can also export the whole 3D house model into unity and upload it to VRChat to actually walk around inside it

https://youtu.be/Gco_OVsT3Wo

They’re still going to launch the 6 operational starliner flights on Atlas V’s, and Amazon has bought several of them for their Kuiper satellite constellation.

Personally I doubt starliner is going to keep flying once the 6 ISS missions are over, regardless of launch vehicle.

For those who don't see the ghost

Really glad how close I managed to get this to true color using just hydrogen and sulfur filters. My one complaint with this image is the halo around Gamma Cass present in both filters. Somehow my previous photo of Alnitak using an identical imaging train didn't have it this extreme. The glow around the bright star isn't nebulosity, but an artifact from the microlenses in the ASI1600 camera. Captured on December 8th, 14th, 22nd, and 26th, 2020 from a bortle 6 zone

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 18 hours 36 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)

• Ha- 94x360"

• Sii- 92x360

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• ImageIntegration to make a superluminance channel (just chucked every frame into a stack)

• DrizzleIntegration per panel(2x, Var β=1.5)

Linear:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

Ha and Sii Stacks

• ChannelCombination to combine channels

Red = Ha

Green = Sii

Blue = Sii

• PhotometricColorCalibration

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch

• HistogramTransformation

• LRGBCombination with nonlinear superlum

Superliminance

• EZ Denoise

• ArcsinhStretch

• HistogramTransformation

Nonlinear

• CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, and saturation

• ACDNR

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• HistogramTransformation to reduce black point

• More Curves

• EZ Star Reduction

• DynamicCrop (lotta empty space on my original framing)

• Resample to 70%

• Annotation

thanks!

I'm guessing it's called that because it's kinda headphone shaped. It was discovered in the 30's so I'm assuming only the brightest parts of the nebula were visible to the astronomers.

This image is a combination of false color narrowband images for the nebula itself, plus true color RGB stars (the nebula is mostly red and a little blue in true color). If you zoom in to the center you can see the very blue white dwarf that caused the planetary nebula to form. Also for those curious this is what a single 10 minute long Ha exposure looks like (image total is 83.5 hours exposure). Captured over 33 nights from Jan-May 2024 from a bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 83 hours 30 minutes (Camera at -15°C), NB exposures at unity gain and BB at half unity

• Ha - 238x600"

• Oiii - 247x600"

• R - 54x60"

• G - 53x60"

• B - 54x60"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction 3x

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

Narrowband Linear:

• Blur and NoiseXTerminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars (to be later replaced by the RGB ones)

• ArcsinhStretch to slightly stretch nonlinear

• iHDR 2.0 script (low preset) to stretch each channel the rest of the way.

here's the link to the repo if you want to add it to your own PI install.

RGB Linear:

• ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R G and B frame into color image

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• BlurXTerminator for star sharpening (correct only)

• HSV Repair

• StarXterminator to generate a stars-only image

• ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear (to be combined with starless narrowband image later)

• Invert > SCNR > invert to remove magentas

• Curves to saturate the stars a bit more

Nonlinear:

• PixelMath to combine stretched Ha and Oiii images into color image (/u/dreamsplease's palette)

R = iif(Ha > .15, Ha, (Ha*.8)+(Oiii*.2))

G = iif(Ha > 0.5, 1-(1-Oiii)*(1-(Ha-0.5)), Oiii *(Ha+0.5))

B = iif(Oiii > .1, Oiii, (Ha*.3)+(Oiii*.2))

• NoiseX again

• Background Neutralization

• Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc

• even more curves

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier

This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

mtf(.005,

mtf(.995,Stars)+

mtf(.995,Starless))

• Couple final curves

• Resample to 65%

• DynamicCrop

• Annotation

VdB 152 is technically just one part at the end of the dark nebula, and there are a number of other cataloged structures in this image. Captured from August 16-25, 2023. Broadband data from a Bortle 3 zone (Deerlick astronomy village), Ha from Bortle 9.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 30 hours 15 minutes (Camera at -15°C)

BB exposures at half unity gain (76/15), Ha at unity gain (139/21)

• Ha - 102x600"

• L - 200x120"

• R - 70x120"

• G - 70x120"

• B - 68x120"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration per channel per panel

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• Dynamic Crop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

Luminance Linear:

• BlurXterminator

• NoiseXterminator

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch to nonlinear

Ha Linear:

These steps largely follow the ones in NightPhoton's advanced narrowband combination guide.

• Combine Ha with Red channel (HRR palette)

• BackgroundNeutralization

• ColorCalibration

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars

• PixelMath to subtract red continuum spectrum, leaving just Ha signal

• HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

• NoiseXterminator + a little concolution

• CurvesTransformation to adjust black point/contrast

differing from the guide above, the background was a dark gray rather than clipped to black since this is more faint structure addition than bright structure

RGB Linear:

• SpectrophotometricColorCalibration

• Slight SCNR Green

• HSV repair

• ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch to nonlinear

duplicate stars only was made and stretched to nonlinear using a less aggressive arcsin+HT for star addition later

Nonlinear Processing:

• Various curve adjustments for lightness, contrast, hue, saturation, etc (with varying lum/star masks)

• LRGBCombination using stretched L as luminance

• DeepSNR

• More curves

• PixelMath to add stretched Ha per the advanced narrowband guide above

• BlurXterminator for star reduction

Next few steps kinda follow along with this independent starless processing tutorial for manually combining stars via re-linearization

• StarXterminator

• HistogramTransformation to unstretch (also applied to duplicate stars early image from earlier)

• PixelMath to combine starless + stars only images

• HT to stretch everything back to nonlinear

• Guess what more curves

• MultiscaleLinearTransform for chrominance noise reduction

• LocalHistogramEqualization (2 rounds of this at scales 68 and 384 with lum masks)

• ColorSaturation to selectively saturate reds

• Even more curves

• Resample to 70%

• Annotation

NASA is still doing a seat exchange and launching Johnny Kim on the next Soyuz in March, but it looks like it’ll be just Russians on at least the next 2 Soyuz’s after that

Thanks to my north facing balcony, I can only photograph the moon when it's at high declinations. Fortunately it was at +27 dec the other day, and it was early enough for me to be awake to shoot it! Captured at 10pm on April 12th, 2024.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: (Camera at Unity Gain, -15°C)

• R - 20000 x 5.4ms

• G - 2000 x 4.3ms

• B - 2000 x 6.0ms

Capture Software:

• Captured using Sharpcap and N.I.N.A. for mount/filterwheel control

Stacking:

• Stacked the best 25% of frames in Autostakkert (autosharpened, 3X Drizzle)

PixInsight Processing:

• DynamicCrop

• ChannelCombination to combine monochrome images into RGB image

• ChannelMatch to align G and B color channels to red

• ColorCalibration

• HistogramTransformation (slight stretch)

• SCNR > invert > SCNR to remove green and magenta color fringing

• CurvesTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc.

• LocalHistogramTransformation

• dynamic crop

• Annotation

Went out to a darksite and tried snapping some milky way pics with my DSLR while the main telescope was doing its thing. The three brightest stars in the image (Vega, Altair, and Deneb) make up the 3 points of the Summer Triangle. There's also a ton of deep sky objects in this part of the sky, including all of these that I've photographed before. Captured on July 18th, 2023 from the Deerlick Astronomy Village (bortle 3 zone)

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• Canon T3i (astro-modded)

• Tamron 17-50mm lens

• Joby 3K tripod planted firmly on top of a RAV4

Acquisition: 3.5 minutes (17mm f/2.8 ISO 800)

• 14x15"

• Darks- 10

Capture Software:

• Captured using my finger on the shutter button

PixInsight Processing

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, var β=1.5)

• DynamicCrop to remove blurred trees at the bottom

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• SCNR green

• NoiseXTerminator

• ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear

• Slight SCNR green

• Shitloads of curves to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast etc with varying luminance/star masks

• MLT chrominance noise reduction

• NoiseXTerminator

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• DarkStructureEnhance

• more curves

• Resample to 60%

• Annotation