Target:NGC281 Pacman Nebula, a bright emission and part HII region in the constellation of Cassiopeia at about 9200 light years from Earth.

Location:29/12/2020 from St.Helens UK, Bortle 8 under a full Moon.

Aquisition:25x 180s Ha, 25x 180s (OIII), 21x 180s (SII). Total integration 213min.

Equipment:Imaging: Skywatcher Esprit 100ED, HEQ5, ZWO ASI1600MM Pro with EFWmini and Baader-Planetarium narrowband filters.

Guiding: Skywatcher 9x50 Finder with ZWO ASI120MM.

Software:Capture: NINA, PHD2.

Processing: DeepSkyStacker, Siril, Starnet++, Photoshop.

Memories:Still clear frosty conditions with a full Moon.

Framing is a little out as this was shot using 2 scopes.

H-alpha data captured by Mick Hyde (9 Feb 14).

H-Alpha - 12x300s & 7x20s

Green - 21x120s & 21x15s (2x2)

Blue - 15x120s & 15x15s (2x2)

Stacked in DeepSkyStacker & processed in PS2.

Camera: Atik 490ex Mono

Filters: Baader H-Alpha 7nm, GB.

Scope: (G&B) Sky-Watcher Equinox 80ED .

Mount: AZ EQ6-GT goto, PhD guided with Orion 50mm guidescope & SSAG.

wiki

grazie ad Ale ed a Edo, per l'ospitalita', l'assistenza e la compagnia!! :) un bel regalo di compleanno ragassi!

Telescopi o obiettivi di acquisizione: APO Triplet 130/910 mm

Camere di acquisizione: Canon / CentralDS EOS Astro 50D

Montature: Sky-Watcher EQ6 Pro

Telescopi o obiettivi di guida: 80/600

Camere di guida: lacerta mgen2

Riduttori di focale: Flattener 2"

Software: DeepSkyStacker, Adobe Lightroom 3, Noel Carboni's Astro Tools for PhotoShop

Filtri: Orion SkyGlow 2" Imaging Filter

Risoluzione: 1600x1066

Date: 07 giugno 2013, 08 giugno 2013

Luoghi: Refrancore

Pose:

Orion SkyGlow 2" Imaging Filter: 10x240" ISO1600 bin 1x1

Orion SkyGlow 2" Imaging Filter: 18x360" ISO1600 bin 1x1

Integrazione: 2.5 ore

Dark: ~12

Flat: ~20

The Andromeda Galaxy from my backyard in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Orion ED80

Canon 5D

Celestron CG5 mount.

32 x 1min exposures at ISO 1600

Stacked with DeepSkyStacker.

A spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis.

It goes by the nickname of the Hidden galaxy as it's a very difficult target for visual and for photography. This is due to it lying pretty much in the same line of sight as the Milky Way and all it's bright stars and dust lanes. Except IC342 which is about 11 million light years further on.

Boring techie bit:

Skywatcher Quattro 8" Newtonian Reflector steel tube with the f4 aplanatic coma corrector, Skywatcher EQ6 R pro mount, Altair Starwave 50mm guide scope, ZWO asi120mm guide camera mini, ZWO asi533mc pro cooled to -10c gain 100, Optolong L'enhance 2" filter, ZWO asiair plus.

Darks, Flats & Bias.

Stacked with DeepSkyStacker and processed in StarTools & Affinity Photo.

Also known as Caldwell 49 and NGC 2237.

The Rosette is an emission nebula in the constellation Monoceros some 5,000 light years away.

It's thought to be responsible for the birth of some 2,500 stars. A group of which can be seen near the centre, this is the open star cluster NGC 2244 estimated to be about 4,000,000 years old.

Boring Techie bit:

Telescope: Askar FRA400 with .7 reducer

Mount: EQ6r pro

Camera: ZWO 533mc pro

Filter: Optolong L'eNhance.

Guided and controlled by the ZWO asiair+

Best 90% of 40 light frames 180 seconds each.

Stacked with darks, flats, dark flats & bias with DSS.

Processed using Graxpert, PixInsight & Affinity Photo.

28 x 5 minutes, ISO 800

Sensor temp: +39-43C

60 darks, 60 flats, 100 bias

Equipment: Canon t2i, Orion 8" Astrograph, Atlas EQ-G

Guiding: SSAG, Orion ST80, PHD

Accessories: Astronomik CLS, Baader MPCC

Acquisition: EQMOD, Cartes du Ciel, Backyard EOS

Processing: DeepSkyStacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop CS6 (for mask fine-tuning)

Stacked with DeepSkyStacker: 15 frames, 2s, F2.8, ISO1600

This is my second attempt at processing this image, I think the result looks better than my last try. I still need more data though.

Canon 60Da

Tamron 24-70mm at 70mm

Astronomik CLS EOS Clip Filter

22x 120 second exposures

ISO 3200 at f/2.8

Tracked using an AstroTrac TT320X-AG (no guiding)

Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Photoshop.

Taken in Cabo de Gata National Park in Spain, May 2014.

The center of this view was barely fifteen degrees above the horizon when I started imaging it, I was killing time waiting for my main target to rise in to view.

22 Lights

30 Darks

30 Flats

Known has the Silver Needle galaxy.

This edge-on loose spiral galaxy is about 13.5 million light years from us in the constellation Canes Venatici. It's estimated to be 65,000 light years from end to end.

Captured on the 6th of March 2024.

Bortle 6, poor seeing.

Boring techie bit:

Skywatcher Quattro 8" Newtonian Reflector steel tube with the f4 aplanatic coma corrector, Skywatcher EQ6 R pro mount, Altair Starwave 50mm guide scope, ZWO asi120mm guide camera mini, ZWO asi533mc pro cooled to -20c gain 100, Optolong L'enhance 2" filter, ZWO asiair plus.

120s exposures.

Best 70% of 90 light frames.

Darks, Flats & Bias.

Stacked with DeepSkyStacker and processed in Affinity Photo

The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. The giant spiral disk of stars, dust and gas is 170,000 light-years across — nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. The galaxy’s spiral arms are sprinkled with large regions of star-forming nebulas. These nebulas are areas of intense star formation within giant molecular hydrogen clouds. Brilliant, young clusters of hot, blue, newborn stars trace out the spiral arms. (ref: Wikipedia and NASA)

Observation data (J2000 epoch)

Constellation: Ursa Major

Right ascension: 14h 03m 12.6s

Declination: +54° 20′ 57″

Distance: 20.9 ± 1.8 Mly

Apparent magnitude (V): 7.9

Tech Specs: Orion 8” RC Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at -10F, 47 x 60 seconds, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: February 5, 2024. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).

As requested by some fellow imagers, here's a look at what each individual narrowband channel has to offer in this part of the sky.

3 panel narrowband mosaic. Exposure times for each panel: 24X600"Ha, 24X600"OIII, and 24X600"SII.

Equipment used:

Canon 85mm f1.8 lens at f4, ZWO ASI183mm camera, AP900 mount, DeepSkyStacker, PixInsight star alignment, Photoshop levels, curves, blending, guided with ZWO174mm and Stellarvue SVR90T.

M13 Globular Cluster in Hercules.

Location:29-05-23 St Helens, UK, Bortle 7. 71% Moon.

Acquisition:19x 180s Red, 20x 180s Green, 20x 180s Blue. Calibrated with Bias, Darks, Flats and Dark flats.

Equipment:Skywatcher 200P Newtonian (modified), EQ6Rpro; Baader MPCCMkIII Coma Corrector; Optolong RGB filters; ZWO ASI533MMpro, EFW, EAF.

Guiding:Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED, Altair GPCAMAR0130M

Software:NINA, PHD2, EQMOD

Processing:DeepSkyStacker, Affinity Photo with NoiseXTerminator plug-in. GraXpert, Siril, AstroSharp.

Pleiades M45 last night. Moon was out, so hard to get detail! 🔭

Stacked 20 lights, iso 800, 180seconds and processed in DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop. Nikon z 50 and Skywatcher Esprit 100.

I tried the globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules again this year. This time I used the 1000 mm f/10 Maksutov-Cassegrain telephotolens MC MTO-11CA (nicknamed "Russentonne" or "russian barrel" due to its stocky look and its provenience), together with the Samsung NX30 and mounted onto the Star Adventurer tracking mount. It's actually quite daring to do this, particularly without guiding, since the mount is not really designed for such a long focal length. Nevertheless, I managed to get around 100 reasonably clear 30s subs (although with a woeful success rate of only about 1 out of 3, i.e., 300 acquired, 100 accepted).

Still, I think it was worth the effort. Sharpness is homogeneous and decent after some careful post-processing, and star colours come out nicely after photometric calibration, and -typical for this lens- without any chromatic aberration. The depth of the photo is not awesome with just short of one hour useful integration time, but the galaxy NGC6207 already starts to appear at the top left.

Image details:

Lens: MC MTO-11CA 1000 mm f/10

Camera: Samsung NX30

Mount: Skywatcher Star Adventurer

Guiding: no

Filter: none

Useful subs: 98x 30 s @ ISO3200 (out of 291)

Processing:

Stacking: Deep Sky Stacker with colour calib turned off

Post-processing: SiRiL, fitswork, Luminar 2018

www.DonegalSkies.com

Location: Killygordon, Co. Donegal, Ireland.

Time: 20:30-22:00

Date: 14 March 2010

Target: Orion's Belts (inculding M42 and the Horsehead Nebula)

Exposures: Seven ten minute exposures (6 Darks). 70mins total exposure. Combined with 15 x 30sec and 30 x 15sec exposures for the core of the Orion nebula.

Equipment: Mount- Celestron CG4 (unguided)

Camera- Unmodified Canon 1000D

Lens- 70-300mm Sigma APO working at 135mm

Additional- Astronomik cls clip LP filter.

Stacking & Processing: DeepSkyStacker & Photoshop 7.0

About 9.5 hours of exposure over four days using a Tamron 150-600mm lens set to 300mm attached to a Canon EOS 50D(modified). Taken in strong Los Angeles light pollution under the hated light pole. I really need to invest in a light pollution filter but they're expensive...

Processed using DeepSkyStacker, Photoshop, Topaz Denoise AI, and Lightroom.

While I'm waiting for a new 12mm f2.0 lens, I thought I'd test my new Fuji X-M1 with the kit zoom under the light polluted skies of suburban Melbourne at ISO 6400. Then I pushed and played as much as I dared.

It's not realistic, but it is remarkable what a digital camera and software can do these days.

A photo of our galaxy, the Milky Way, taken just outside our chalet at Crystal Springs Mountain Lodge in Mpumalanga, South Africa. It's amazing what a dark, clear sky can show (along with a little work on the computer). This is 10 photos that I took (each 30 seconds exposure time), stacked together (using Deep Sky Stacker), and then edited a bit in GIMP. My first real Milky Way shot!

If anyone is curious about how I went about getting this shot, I wrote a "how-to" here: digital-photography-school.com/forum/how-i-took/197256-mi...

there the stars are born from the Cocoons.

Covering the large portion of the Milky Way, which is the disk subsystem of our Galaxy, constellation Cygnus houses a lot of gaseous and dusty entities, both bright and dark. This image features among others the tiny bright Cocoon nebula (IC 5146/ Caldwell 19) which is a star formation region and much more prominent dark filament of Barnard 128 (the Snake nebula).

2048 size is quite viewable :)

Aquisition time: 10-11.08.2013 between 23:45 and 01:30 MSK (UTC+4)

Equipment:

Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 macro USM lens and Baader Planetarium 2" UHC filter mounted in front of the lens via step-down ring attached to Canon EOS 60D running Magic Lantern 2.3 firmware override riding on Vixen Polarie tracking platform over photo-tripod (alltogether codenamed "Anywhere Is, SWANS configuration").

Aperture 21,4 mm

Focal length 60 mm

Tv = 60 seconds

Av = f/2.8

ISO 4000

Exposures: 58 (plus 27 dark frames and 10 offset frames plus 2 fake flat-field frames).

Processing: Contrast was set to "linear" for all images in Canon DPP and 16-bit outputs were fed to DSS and stacked in Maximum Enthropy mode.

16-bit stacking result was processed in Photoshop with AutoContrast and Levels (namely gamma was set to 3,5) and Curves (skewed sigmoid curve was applied).

Note: I had to crop away some portion at the bottom of the image. The stars were really ugly there.

Canon 135mm f/2 prime lens closed down to f/2.8,SX Trius Pro 694 mono ccd with Baader 7nm Ha filter (1.25") riding on CEM60.

Two pane mosaic consists of 12-18 ten minute subs stacked in Deepskystacker,mosaic stitched using Microsoft ICE and processed in PS CS2.

Taken 22/02/27

'Ave anuvver one :)

Did this the same session as The Ring Nebula. Two images in one session - whatever next? :)

M103 aka NGC 581 is one of the most distant open clusters known, with distances of 8,000 to 9,500 light years from Earth and ranging about 15 light years apart. The cluster is about 25 million years old. Thus spake Wiki.

To me, it's number 27 :)

Taken with a TMB92L, Canon T3i DSLR, and Celestron CG-4 mount. Consists of 34 light and 20 dark frames, each a 45-second exposure at ISO 800, stacked in DeepSkyStacker and processed in Photoshop.

First light with my first ever dedicated astronomy camera. It was a trial and error evening. After a lot of hair pulling and youtube watching, I managed to get most of the equipment talking to each other. So I decided to try it out on an easy target, Messier 82 the Cigar galaxy. I won't bore you with M82 facts . . . this time. If you do want to know, I did post a picture of M82 not long ago taken with my DSLR. If you flick back through some of my recent pictures you'll find some M82 facts there.

And now for the really boring bit, equipment used:

Skywatcher Quattro 8" Newtonian Reflector steel tube with the f4 aplanatic coma corrector, Skywatcher EQ6 R pro mount, Altair Starwave 50mm guide scope, ZWO asi120mm guide camera mini, ZWO asi533mc pro cooled to -10c, ZWO asiair plus.

20, 3 minute exposures bin 1 gain 0, stacked with darks, flats and bias.

DeepSkyStacker, StarTools and Affinity Photo used for processing.

I think I stopped the aperture down a bit too much on this one, causing the diffraction spikes around the Pleiades's brightest stars. Next time, I'll try f/5.6 or f/6.3.

Taken with a Sigma AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG at 133mm and f/8, Canon T3i DSLR, and Celestron Advanced VX mount. Consists of 34 light and 30 dark frames, each a 90-second exposure at ISO 1600, and 21 flat frames. Captured with BackyardEOS, stacked in DeepSkyStacker, and processed in Photoshop.

M106 36 x 600 secs in Lum. Added 4 hours to my last image flic.kr/p/sazkxL

Optics: Orion Optics CT8 F4.5 fitted with a Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector.

Camera: Xpress Trius SX-694 Mono Cooled to -20C

Guiding: OAG witha Lodestar X2

Filter: Baader Lum

Mount: Skywatcher AZ EQ6-GT EQ & Alt-Az Mount connected to the Sky X and Eqmod via HitecAstro EQDIR adapter

Image Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro

Stacking and Calibrating: Deepskystacker

Processing: Pixinsight 1.8, Photoshop CC

Fujifilm X-T10, Samyang 135mm f/2.0 @ f2.0, ISO 1600, 25 x 60 sec, tracking with iOptron SkyTracker Pro, stacking with DeepSkyStacker, editing in GIMP, taken May 11 under Bortle 3 skies with thin cloud cover.

28x30sec at ISO 12800

180mm f/4

Nikon D750

Clear sky, no moon, new camera, and news of a comet in Taurus -- who cares if it's a little cold out there....

Posted to Slider's Sunday, even though the post-processing is relatively mild by that group's standards. In particular, let me emphasize that Lovejoy and the Pleiades really did share this little section of the sky. But posted to SS because it used a new (to me) color processing strategy.

Averaged the multiple (28) images in DeepSkyStacker, and imported the result into the Gimp, along with -- and this was the innovation -- an extra copy of the last exposure as a new layer. I roughly white-balanced out the skyglow in the new layer, smoothed it, bumped up the contrast (which has the effect of increasing saturation), and made this the "color" layer to emphasize the actual green and blue colors of the comet and stars.

Startrails at Barronal Beach, Cabo de Gata, Spain.

Canon 60D

14mm Samyang at f/2.8

30 second exposures at ISO 800

160 frames stacked in Startrails.de

The Exif data is wrong because this lens doesn't communicate with the camera.

Equipment:

Telescope: Orion XT10i on Skywatcher EQ6 Pro

Camera: Canon 550D unmodified + Baader MPCC

Guiding: Orion Magnificent Mini Autoguider + PHD Guiding

Software: APT, DeepSkyStacker, PixInsight

Images: 120x30sec ISO1600 Lights; 50x Darks; 50x Bias; 50x Flats

Telescopi o obiettivi di acquisizione: Celestron 127/1500 Maksutov-Cassegrain

Camere di acquisizione: Svbony SV105

Montature: Celestron SLT

Software: ASTROSURFACE · PIPP x64 2.5.9 · DeepSkyStacker

Data:09 Novembre 2020

Ora: 12:43

Pose: 250

FPS: 15,00000

Lunghezza focale: 1500

Seeing: 3

Trasparenza: 7

Comet ATLAS C/2019 Y4, discovered in December 2019, has been quickly increasing in brightness over the last few months, and many of us hope that trend will continue; past projections put it as reaching naked-eye brightness this April or May. However, it's brightness has recently plateaued around magnitude +8. That and an elongated nucleus suggest that it might be disintegrating.

It was likely about magnitude +8 when I photographed it last night, April 9th, near Star 42 Camelopardalis. I'm not sure what the faint nebulosity is to the lower left of the comet: either Dark Nebula HSVMT 25, integrated flux nebula (IFN), or it's simply an artifact. Galaxy NGC 2366 is also apparent in the upper right corner.

Acquisition details: Fujifilm X-T10, Samyang 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC @ f2.0, ISO 1600, 50 x 30 sec, tracking with iOptron SkyTracker Pro, stacking with DeepSkyStacker (used comet stacking mode so stars and comet were stacked separately and then combined), editing with Astro Pixel Processor and GIMP, taken in the 30 minute-window between astronomic dusk and the rise of the 93% illuminated moon on April 9, 2020 under Bortle 3/4 skies.

[edit: reprocessed]

Ho usato solo lo spianatore con il 102 a 700mm, sono molto contento del campo ai bordi :) ma si sono generati due strani flare che erano già comparsi con la foto delle Pleiadi di settembre, chiaramente non ho la benchè minima idea di cosa la generi, forse il filtro skyglow, nelle due foto ho usato due spianatori differenti..

Vabbèè

Telescopi o obiettivi di acquisizione: 102ED

Camere di acquisizione: Canon EOS 450D / Digital Rebel XSi / Kiss X2

Montature: Sky-Watcher EQ6 Pro

Telescopi o obiettivi di guida: 80/600

Camere di guida: LVI Smartguider 2

Riduttori di focale: Tecnosky Spianatore 2"

Software: DeepSkyStacker, Adobe Lightroom 3

Filtri: Orion Skyglow 2" Filter

Luoghi: Cossombrato (AT)

Pose: 15x600"

Integrazione: 2.5 ore

Giorno lunare medio: 6.18 giorni

Fase lunare media: 37.30%

Centro AR: 05:40:32.709

Centro DEC: -02:20:15.945

Campionamento: 4.98 arcsec/pixel

Orientazione: 125.66 gradi

Larghezza del campo: 1.77 gradi

Altezza del campo: 1.18 gradi

The time is now! I've heard the requests and for my latest calendar, it is exclusively astrophotography as shot through my telescope/camera setup. I'll unveil all 12 months in the coming days, but for today, I'll open up preorders and share with you a brand new photo that made the cut. More on this photo after the calendar details:

If you want to preorder a 2022 calendar, please fill out this form forms.gle/cNdv9go1NcBQp4tC8 . The calendars will be $18 for preorders and then $20 after November 1. The price includes shipping to anywhere in the US/Canada. The calendars are individually wrapped and all photos are ones that I have shot with my telescope/camera setup of amazing celestial views. I'll be sharing some more of exactly what you can expect next week.

As for this new image... you are looking at NGC 7380, the Wizard Nebula! I first shot this about a year ago when I was still figuring out a lot with capturing/processing narrowband astrophotography, and I just re-shot it a few nights ago and gave it a full new re-process. The final result is a bit more true to how the colors actually appear to the naked eye, as far as the emissions of the various gases involved. The image came from a little over 5 hours of narrowband exposures (105 minutes in Hydrogen-Alpha, Sulfur-ii, and Oxygen-iii separately) in the same night. The individual exposures were 5 minutes long and they were stacked in DeepSkyStacker before being combined in PixInsight.

This was inevitable - got to leave it alone now.

Little less brutal, and easier on the blue. Also, I used lens correction in the previous version to compensate for the lack of flattener. That distorts the entire image though, and made the galaxy a little wide of girth! Better in this version I think (if you don't look at the corners) :)

SW ED80/EQ5, cropped

Nikon D70 modded, Baader Neodymium filter

18 x 4 mins iso 1600

30 x 6 mins iso 1250

22 x 10 mins iso 800

Guiding: Quickcam Pro4000/9x50 finderscope, PHD

Stacked in DSS and processed in CS5

Reprocessed again here :)

www.DonegalSkies.com

Due to weather conditions, lack of guiding and some technical problems, it took me almost 12 hours to get a hours worth of usable data on this!! I'll have to revisit this one before the winter is out.

Location: Killygordon, Co. Donegal, Ireland.

Time: 00:00-05:00

Date: 01 December 2010

Target: Horsehead and Flame Nebulae

Exposures: 12 x Five minute exposures (20Darks, 25Bias). 60mins total exposure.

Equipment:

Mount- Celestron CG5-GT (unguided)

Camera- Self-modified Canon 1000D

Telescope- Celestron C8N

Additional- Astronomik cls clip LP filter.

Stacking & Processing: DeepSkyStacker & Photoshop 7.0

Spirithands Photography on facebook

More Creative Commons images here

88 x 30sec @ ISO3200

Canon 60D

Stacked with Deepskystacker, processed in PixInsight and Photoshop.

Carbon Serrurier truss Royce 10" f4 Newtonian.

Televue paracorr type 2 corrector.

Takahashi NJP mount.

Total 2hrs

H-Alpha - 7x600sec, Oii - 5x600sec

Stacked in DeepSkyStacker, processed in PS2

Camera: Atik 314L+ Mono using Geoptik adapter

Filters: Baader H-Alpha 7nm, Oiii

Lens: Tamron 70-300mm (set 100mm).

Mount: AZ EQ6-GT goto, PhD guided with Orion 50mm guidescope with SSAG.

noise stack of 106 images.

Canon EOS 6D

Canon 300mm f/4.0 + Canon 1.6x teleconverter

15 seconds @f/5.6 @ISO 1600

Polarie Tracker

DeepSkyStacker

Lens: Sigma Art 135mm stopped to 46mm (f/2.93)

Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM

Filters: Baader CMOS-Optimized Ultra-Narrowband

Exposure: Ha 6x10min, OIII 5x10min, RGB 5x1min

Mount: CEM70G

Captured with SGP

Registered and stacked with DeepSkyStacker

Photographed from Round Rock TX (light pollution zone: red)

A closer view of the comet between the trees at the bottom of our garden, just before midnight on 17/18 July. This is a manual stack of eight images in Photoshop - I could not get DeepSkyStacker to work on this sequence.

I think my source photos were soft and off-focus and this hasn't helped in the final image stack, where I used the comet head as the reference point.

8 frames | 230mm | F7.1 | ISO 1000 | 10s | total 80s

Lens: Sigma Art 135mm f/1.8 (@ f/1.8)

Camera: Canon 6D

Exposure: 10x4seconds, ISO 3200

Mount: just a tripod, no RA tracking

Registered and stacked with DeepSkyStacker

Photographed from Round Rock TX (light pollution zone: red)

Fujifilm X-T10, Samyang 135mm f/2.0 @ f2.0, ISO 1600, 40 x 60 sec, tracking with iOptron SkyTracker Pro, stacking with DeepSkyStacker, editing in GIMP, taken July 31 under Bortle 3/4 skies. Conditions seemed about perfect, Sadr was nearly directly overhead, and my focus was dead-on, making processing simple.

Notable nebulae contained in this extent are the Gamma Cygni Nebula around Sadr and the Crescent Nebula near the center.

Taken on my third consecutive night of astrophotography - I'm not going out tonight despite the likely clear skies - I need a break.

Aug. 2 update: A re-edit, this time without a luminance layer - makes the reds less pink.

I combined a stack of 10 with DeepSkyStacker to deal with the noise, and I had a heck of a time doing it, too! :) Maybe because I accidentally shot in jpeg...

Equipment

Imaging Telescopes Or Lenses

GSO 8" f/5 Imaging Newtonian

Imaging Cameras

ZWO ASI 183 MM PRO

Mounts

Sky-Watcher NEQ6-Pro

Filters

Baader B 1.25'' CCD Filter · Baader G 1.25'' CCD Filter · Baader R 1.25'' CCD Filter

Accessories

TSOptics TS Off Axis Guider - 9mm · Pal Gyulai GPU Aplanatic Koma Korrector 4-element

Software

Luc Coiffier DeepSkyStacker (DSS) · PHD2 Guiding · PhotoShop CS5 · FitsWork 4 · CCDCiel

Guiding Telescopes Or Lenses

GSO 8" f/5 Imaging Newtonian

Guiding Cameras

Astrolumina Alccd5L-IIc

Acquisition details

Dates:

Sept. 15, 2020

Frames:

Baader B 1.25'' CCD Filter: 20x300" (1h 40') (gain: 53.00) -20°C bin 1x1

Baader G 1.25'' CCD Filter: 20x300" (1h 40') (gain: 53.00) -20°C bin 1x1

Baader R 1.25'' CCD Filter: 20x300" (1h 40') (gain: 53.00) -20°C bin 1x1

Integration:

5h

Pinwheel- Galaxie

Mizar and Alco, Alkaid, Deichsel vom Sternbild Großer Wagen (Bär)

60s ? f 2.8 / ISO500 / EF100mm

DSS - 3 Pic Stack

Pic taken 2019-05-13 / just 3 pic's usable (cloudy)

First try at NGC7000, from the back yard. 9/24/2022

20 x 240 secs.

Canon EOS-R

William Optics GT81

iOptron CEM40

DeepSkyStacker

DxO PhotoLab 5

Bortle 7+

382mm

ISO 1600

f/4.7

Plejaden (M45)

auch 7 Schwestern genannt

Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker

48 Lights / 31 Darks / 40 Bias

Single Frame

30sec / f 7.1 / ISO 200 / 500mm

Canon 80D / Sigma 150-600c

Star Adventurer unguided

The 'W' of Cassiopeia has always been one of my favorite constellations - maybe because I could always spot it as a kid.

This extent contains the middle three stars of the 'W' - Ruchbah (blue, bottom), Navi (blue, upper left), and Shedar (yellow, upper right). The center star of the 'W', Navi, illuminates the Gamma Cassiopeiae Nebulae (IC 59 and IC 63) a combination of red emission and blue reflection nebulae. The red/pink emission nebula below Shedar is the Pacman Nebula (IC 11 or NGC 281). And to the right of Ruchbah is the Owl or E.T. Cluster (NGC 457); the owl or E.T. is upside down here.

Fujifilm X-T10, Samyang 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC @ f2.0, ISO 1600, 35 x 60 sec, tracking with iOptron SkyTracker Pro, stacking with DeepSkyStacker, editing with Astro Pixel Processor and GIMP, taken on Oct. 23, 2019 under Bortle 3/4 skies and thin cloud cover.

Thin cloud cover was present most of the time that I imaged and acted as a diffusion filter for the larger stars. I kind of like this effect that emphasizes big stars, especially for this extent where the nebulae are fairly small for a focal length of 135mm, although I'd always prefer clear skies to a natural diffusion filter. Even though my tracking was spot-on (good balance, polar alignment, and a charged SkyTracker), I wasn't able to use about half of my subs because of clouds.