The Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Cepheus near the star Polaris in our northern sky. It is approximately 6 light years across and about 1300 light years from earth.

The nebula's blue color is caused by the scattering of light from the central star , HD 200775, by the dust grains within the nebula.

This image is the result of 865 ten second images taken with the ZWO SeeStar telescope stacked and processed in PixInsight.

The star at the tip of the fan is R Monocerotis, a very young variable star surrounded by a small accretion disk. Its classified as a T-Tauri star so it hasn't quite settled down on the main sequence yet.

Its around B8 in terms of luminosity class at present but is likely to drop down to F,G or K when it matures. The brightness may be in part related to Lithium burning which pre-main sequence stars can achieve.

The larger fan like structure is a reflection nebula - a gas cloud illuminated by the star.

Just two problems - R Monocerotis varies in luminosity. Also the surrounding accretion disk varies in density so both these factors change the illumination that the reflection nebula receives - sometimes over just a few days.

Animations of this region taken over months show flickering flame-like appearance of the reflection nebula as its illumination from the star and shielding accretion disc change.

Im going to try to get enough images to make a short animation of this.

Taken with the T18 scope in Nerpio, ESP

The Cocoon Nebula, IC5146, is an emission and reflection nebula in the constellation Cygnus and lies some 3300 light years away. The central star that lights the reflection nebula was formed roughly 100000 years ago. The Cocoon is an area of active star formation in the emission nebula. The nebula is further surrounded by a dark nebula, Barnard 168, which appears as a dark lane extending away from the Cocoon.

Details:

Scope: AT10RCT @ f/5.5

Reducer: CCDT67

Camera: QSI690-wsg8

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Ultrastar

Mount: Mach1 GTO

RGB: 25x5min each

L: 34x5min

Software: SGP, PHD2, APCC, Pixinsight

9.1 hrs total exposure

This is a deep space photograph of NGC 2264, the Christmas Tree Cluster and Cone Nebula, some of the lovely night sky jewels in our Milky Way. Inside NGC 2264 is Sh2-273 the Fox Fur Nebula—which is the bright, blue nebula at the center of the image along with some intermingling nebulosity—which, now that I have been able to appreciate it more with this photograph, quickly became one of my favorite objects in space.

Alternate Photograph with Closer View

www.flickr.com/photos/jamespeirce/54418093584

I’ve wanted to photograph this region for a while now with the idea of making a fun family Christmas card. Maybe even doing something seasonally themed with narrowband images and colorful RGB stars. And then probably never sending a Christmas card out again. That ambition got kicked down the road year after year for a while. Around the time NGC 2264 starts climbing in my skies temperatures are starting to drop well below freezing and weather become rather consistently cloudy and gloomy. Then the holidays come and go. And then, when I do have an opportunity coming out of winter, I’m usually after one of the other amazing winter targets.

This year, though, I decided to buck the trend, and spent some time on NGC 2264 over a couple clear nights coming out of winter. I’m glad I did! Some aspects of this nebula ended up being much more amazing than I anticipated, and the Fox Fur Nebula, and region around it, in particular, earned its place as one of my favorite objects in space, and this ended up being one of my favorite photographs.

This photograph of NGC 2264 was taken over three nights—one in 2022 and two in February of 2025—in Skull Valley, Utah. I used my Epsilon Takahashi 180D telescope for color images used to create this image and incorporated some narrowband (photographing specific wavelengths of light, much as the Hubble Space Telescope does) which I photographed with my Takahashi FS-60CB (0.72x Reducer) and my Takahashi FCT-65D (0.65x Reducer) (one night in 2022 and the other in 2025, with the later telescope upgrading the former). Images were stacked together and edited in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop.

For more editing notes and other technical details see my website link below.

Equipment Used

Takahashi FS-60CB (0.72x Reducer)

Takahashi FCT-65D (0.65x Reducer)

- ZWO ASI2600MM Pro

- Astronomik MaxFR Hα & OIII

- Rainbow Astro RST 135E

- ZWO ASIAir Plus

Takahashi ε180D (1.5x Extender)

- ZWO ASI2600MC Pro Duo

- ZWO AM5

- ZWO ASIAir Plus

For more information about NGC 2264, other photographs, information about how this was photographed, editing notes, see:

mypetstars.com/astrophotography/NGC2264

Creative Commons License

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED

Attribute to James Peirce

The Toby Jug Nebula / The Butterfly Nebula / IC2220

This impressive structure is the Toby Jug Nebula named by astronomers P. Murdin, D. Allen and D. Malin because it resembled the shape of a Toby Jug tankard. IC 2220 has nearly symmetrical loops of dust and gas reaching outwards that highlight the death throes of an ancient red-giant star.

I have always enjoyed imaging reflection nebula. Most are typically blue, reflecting and dispersing the light from young bright blue stars. In this instance, we have a rare yellow reflection nebula. There are examples of some well-known red-orange reflection nebula, which always result from nearby red giant stars.

In this image, I wanted to capture some extra HII data to see if I could use this to enhance the image. There was certainly an impressive glow at the core, but it failed to reveal any extra filaments or structure to the nebula with the limited amount of HII data I collected. To my delight, two HII lobes started to reveal themselves further out from the main reflection nebula. You can locate these dim HII areas (lobes) as the dim arcs containing a reddish hue. I would need a lot more integration time to highlight these areas.

I love galaxies. If you look around the image, they seem to pop out everywhere. There is even a tiny galaxy in the reflection nebula (around the 7:30 position near the end of the large filament. I tried finding a name for this galaxy using the SIMBAD Astronomical Database, but it reported an “unknown object”. I had to try :)

Full Size version:

live.staticflickr.com/65535/53901049463_30ee182f75_o.jpg

Instruments:

Telescope: 10" Ritchey-Chrétien RCOS

Camera: SBIG STXL-11000 Mono

Mount: Astro-Physics AP-900

Focal Length: 2310.00 mm

Pixel size: 9.00 um

Resolution: 0.82 arcsec/pix

Lum 84 X 600

Red 24 X 380 Bin2

Green 24 X 380 Bin2

Blue 24 X 380 Bin2

Ha 51 X 1200

Total Exposure: 38 Hours

Thanks for looking

LBN 534 is a molecular cloud stretching across more than 1.5 degrees of sky in the constellation Andromeda. It is about 1400 light years away and about 36 light years ( 211600000000000 miles ) long. The blue reflection nebula within LBN 534 is designated as vdB 158 and is lit by the bright star HD 222142.

There is also a planetary nebula PK110-12.1 located near the bottom center of the image. It was discovered by Luboš Kohoutek in 1963, the same astronomer that discovered Comet Kohoutek, which was visible to the naked eye in 1973. Planetary nebulae only last a few tens of thousands of years -- a mere blink in cosmic time -- before their material scatters into space. A "planetary" nebula is actually a shell of gas and dust that's ejected from a dying star. The name "planetary nebula" is a historical misclassification that comes from when astronomers first observed these objects. They thought they were looking at gas planets, and William Herschel named them after planets because they appeared round. PK110-12.1 appears dark green in this image. There are no green stars (another interesting topic), so see if you can locate it in the sea of dots.

Generally speaking, green colors in a nebula are due to forbidden transitions in ionized Oxygen. Forbidden transitions refer to transitions between energy levels that are not allowed by the selection rules of quantum mechanics under normal circumstances. However, they can still occur under certain conditions, such as in the presence of external fields or through higher-order processes.

Rio Rancho NM Bortle 5 zone, September 23-29, 2024

William Optics Redcat 51

ZWO 183mm pro

ZWO 30mm f/4 mini guide scope and ZWO 120 Mini

Optolong R G B filters

ZWO ASI Air Pro

Sky-Watcher HEQ5

Darks GraXpert dithering

Gain 111 at -10C

Processed in DSS GraXpert and PS

This part of the sky is one of the most colourful region in the sky. This area is about 4.5 x 6.5 degrees across the sky and lies between Ophiuchus & Scorpius constellations. This complex nebulosity cloud is composed of dust & gases that can produce 3,000 suns of our solar system. It consists of one of the closest star forming clouds and lies about 460ly from the Earth. It contains many celestial objects like large star clusters M4 and small star cluster NGC 6144. The yellow-brown star is Antares, which is a super giant star near its end of life. The yellowish cloud around Antares is caused by puffing star’s material to the space. The dark lanes in the image are dark nebulae that hide the stars behind it. I planned to image this beautiful part of the sky by two different lenses. The first one was taken by Canon 100mm f/2.8 camera lens for a wide view of the region and the second one for close-up view was taken by Redcat51 f/4.9. Actually, the close-up image revealed a lot of details of the complex cloud. For both images ZWO ASI 2600MC cooled @ -10 degree. The image subs are 180 sec exposure and the total integration for both images are around 1 hr, 20 Darks, 20 Bias and 20 Flats. Gear setup: iOptron SkyGuider pro unguided, ASIair, Baader UHC-S 2” Filter. Images processed by PS 2020 CC.

Messier 45, the Pleiades - open cluster with reflection nebulae.

I really like widefield astro-images that show a lot of background dust clouds and nebulosity.

Im keen to attempt this with a relatively portable set-up using my StarAdventurer mount.

I had taken 179 x 1 minute subexposures and could see some dust and nebulosity but it wasnt that impressive - then I found a utility in PixInsight called Background Enhance that was very powerful and really brought up the faint dust clouds.

The Pleiades are a collect of young, bright stars that are passing through a dust field causing preferential reflection of blue light in our direction with absorption of red wavelengths by the dust. The linear stuctures in the nebulosity are thought to be the effect of the stars' magnetic fields lining up the dust particles.

The faint "clouds" around the nebula are called "cirrus".

Light pollution was measured at 20.1 magnitude/arcsecond2 which is really good for my suburban garden site.

This was taken with:

Sigma 135mm f/1.8 at f/2.5 @ ISO400

Canon 80D astro modified with IDAS LPS clip-in filter.

Star Adventurer mount

Guiding with ZWO mini-scope and ASIair raspberry pie controller.

Polar alignment with Polemaster.

I managed a RMS error of 4 arcseconds with the ASIair which is fine as native image scale here is 5 arcsec/pixel.

This is a combination of all 3 sessions using my 480mm scope. Two different cameras were used; a Canon 60Da and an astro-modified Canon 80D but PixInsight can scale the images and integrate them together.

In total 34 x 5 minute sub-exposures, taken over 2 years.

Tried some new ways to use noise reduction techniques in PixInsight using low contrast masks with TGVdenoise and Multiscale Median Transform rather than luminosity masks which seemed to work well.

I will copy and paste my technical card from my last session:

480/80mm f/6 Altair Starwave refractor

Astro-modified Canon 80D at ISO400, IDAS LPS D1 filter, 21 x 5 minute subs.

NEQ6 pro mount with Rowan belt drives.

Mini-PC with WiFi

Mount WiFi control with ASCOM/AstroPhotography Tool

Camera WiFi control with Backyard EOS

30 dark frames

40 flat frames (electroluminescent panel @ 1/40s)

31 bias frames

Post processed in PixInsight 1.8 and Photoshop

Local parameters:

Temp: 3.7 - 3.9c

Humidity: 74- 79%

Pressure: 998.5 kPa

Camera Sensor Temp: 12-17c

Light Pollution and Weather:

SQM (L) at start of session (2305 hrs UT) =20.14 mag/arcsec2.

SQM (L) at end of session (0130 hrs UT) = 20.2 mag/arcsec2.

Clear, moderately windy at end.

Polar Alignment:

QHY Polemaster alignment -

Error measured by PHD2=0.1 arc minute.

RA drift + 1.93 arcsec/min

Dec drift -0.02 arcsec/min

Guiding:

PHD2 guiding with ZWO ASI290mm/Altair Starwave 206/50mm guider. Dithered.

RA RMS error 0.76 arcsec, peak error -2.73 arcsec

Dec RMS error 0.63 arcsec, peak error 2.94 arcsec

Astrometry:

Center (RA): 03h 46m 19.894s

Center (Dec): +23° 58' 37.974"

Size: 70.4 x 55.9 arcmin

Pixel scale: 1.59 arcsec/pixel

Haven't really had time for astro lately, but I've processed a friend's stack of the Iris Nebula. About 12h of exposure at 180s through a 150mm f5 Newt, with a Nikon 5600, processed in PixInsight

First attempt to show nebulosity. Shows up much better on original on 27 inch monitor. Wondering if there'd be better nebulosity with fewer light frames. More post processing play needed.

Canon EOS-R with Sigma 150-600 C at 361mm

Sky Watcher Adventurer Pro + BackyardEOS,

Unguided. Bortle 4/5 sky, but with almost full moon.

Stacked in DSS - 50 Lights only

Tweaked in GIMP

The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud is a striking region with rich dust clouds and reflective nebulae, featuring an array of intricate colors and structures. I aimed to capture the depth and subtleties of this lesser-known region by employing an advanced post-processing technique, which brings out the faint details in the surrounding interstellar dust and highlights the blue reflection nebulae.

The California Nebula, NGC 1499, at top left, with the bright star Zeta Persei. at bottom A faint region of reflection nebulosity, IC 348, surrounds the star Atik, or Omicron Persei, at bottom right. The star just below NGC 1499 is Menkib, or Xi Persei. The field is similar to that of binoculars.

This is a stack of 5 x 3-minute exposures with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 800 and 200mm Canon L-Series lens at f/2.8. An additional exposure taken through the Kenko Softon A filter is layered in to add the star glows to bring out their colours. Taken with the Fornax Lightrack tracker as part of testing. Taken from home on a rare fine and mild winter night, January 4, 2019.

This part of the sky is one of the most colourful region in the sky. This area is about 4.5 x 6.5 degrees across the sky and lies between Ophiuchus & Scorpius constellations. This complex nebulosity cloud is composed of dust & gases that can produce 3,000 suns of our solar system. It consists of one of the closest star forming clouds and lies about 460ly from the Earth. It contains many celestial objects like large star clusters M4 and small star cluster NGC 6144. The yellow-brown star is Antares, which is a super giant star near its end of life. The yellowish cloud around Antares is caused by puffing star’s material to the space. The dark lanes in the image are dark nebulae that hide the stars behind it. I planned to image this beautiful part of the sky by two different lenses. The first one was taken by Canon 100mm f/2.8 camera lens for a wide view of the region and the second one for close-up view was taken by Redcat51 f/4.9. Actually, the close-up image revealed a lot of details of the complex cloud. For both images ZWO ASI 2600MC cooled @ -10 degree. The image subs are 180 sec exposure and the total integration for both images are around 1 hr, 20 Darks, 20 Bias and 20 Flats. Gear setup: iOptron SkyGuider pro unguided, ASIair, Baader UHC-S 2” Filter. Images processed by PS 2020 CC.

Antares and Rho Ophiuchi clouds complex

Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello

(Antares) RA 16 29 24.460 DEC -26 25 55.21

The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is a dark nebula of gas and dust that is located 1° south of the star ρ Ophiuchi. At an estimated distance of 131 ± 3 parsecs, this cloud is one of the closest star-forming regions to the Solar System. This cloud covers an angular area of 4.5° × 6.5° in the Sky.

The brightest star in this image is Antares (Alpha Scorpii or α Sco), the fifteenth brightest star in the sky and the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius.

Well visible also Messier 4 (NGC 6121), a globular cluster, approximately at 7,200 light years.

Not missing in the sense of mythology. You lnow how it goes ...the Titan Atlas had seven daughters and because he was forever doomed to hold up the heavens, he couldn't protect them from the hunter Orion. So Zeus transformed them into stars. But only six were visible to the naked eye (for most folks anyway) so to explain that ... as the story goes ... one of the seven fell in love with a mere mortal and went into hiding. In my case that's not why there are missing sisters, though. It's because I haven't had the chance yet to do a mosaic. Actually, I haven't had the chance yet to do much of anything as far as DSO photography is concerned.

I have a lot of firsts here:

1. First DSO photography .Period.

2. Very first light with a new scope ... Orion (yep, that Orion and he's still chasing those sisters ... in a way) EON 130mm with a 0.8 Reducer/Flattener.

3. Very first time guiding ... and let me tell you, getting that OAG to work with the Orion scope was not easy!

4. Very first time using PixInsight to process the image. By the way, I'd like to give a big shout out to Mitch and his 12 part tutorial on PixInsight for beginners:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIXJJqew6rQ.

I only used the first eleven parts as I didn't do any batch processing ... just worked through each tutorial in order. If you're new at this give it a look. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

This is a product of eight (8) ... yes, eight ... 30 second frames, binned 2x2, taken with a ZWO ASI 294MC color camera. No Flats. No Darks. And No Dark Flats. Just the eight Light frames processed in PixInsight.

You might ask why only eight frames for a tolal of 4 minutes of Integration? The answer is the weather. The terrible, rainy, cloudy miserable weather! Hopefully it gets better.

The spectacular field of Messier 8 and 20 emission and reflection nebulas in Sagittarius, with M8, aka the Lagoon Nebula below, and M20, the Trifid Nebula, above, all set in the rich starfields of the Milky Way. The diffuse nebula left of M8 is NGC 6559. Two globular clusters, NGC 6544 and NGC 6553, sit below and to the left (east) of M8. The Messier open cluster, M21, sits above M20.

I shot this April 4, 2016 from the Tibuc Cottage at Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia, using the 77mm Borg f/4 astrograph for a stack of 5 x 6-minute exposures with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600.

Shining by reflected light, this spooky object lies relatively close to us at 1,400 light years distant in the direction of the constellation of Cepheus. The ghost's golden color is borrowed from nearby bright stars.

This image was captured under high desert skies near Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA with a telescope of 12" aperture at f/8 and an electrically-cooled CCD camera. Total exposure (LRGB) was 120 minutes.

Like many, I remember seeing the 3 star Belt Of Orion in the night sky ever since I was a little kid. After all, it's one the most recognizable constellations in the night sky. And for me, hearing stories about the giant hunter and his dog Sirius (the brightest star in the night sky) chasing after the seven sisters added even more interest. This super-wide image brings together several of the winter gems of Orion: the Orion Nebula, Running Man Nebula, Flame Nebula, Dark Horse Nebula, and a ton of dust clouds connecting them together.

As many of you know, I've been shooting telescope pictures remotely using iTelescope.net's equipment and when I heard about their new super-wide T80 telescope in Spain, I was curious. It turns out, this telescope has a (big) 26mp cmos camera paired up with the super-wide lens, running under dark skies in the northern hemisphere - features that work well with Orion. I think the narrowband exposures (especially Hydrogen-Alpha) worked well with Orion in revealing more of the details in the dust clouds. After capturing, I processed my calibrated fit images with Astro Pixel Processor, Photoshop, Star Xterminator, Topaz Sharpen and DeNoise AI with StarSpikesPro on the 3 stars in Orion's Belt.

Exposure Settings

• 40 exposures (3 minutes each)

○ Luminance: 10

○ Red: 5

○ Green: 5

○ Blue: 5

○ Hydrogen-Alpha: 5

○ Sulphur: 5

○ Oxygen: 5

• Total Exposure Time: 120 minutes

Telescope Optics & Camera

• Optics: Samyang 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC

• Focal Length: 135 mm

• Mount: Paramount MyT

• CCD: ASI2600MM - 26 mb

• Observatory Location: E-Eye Fregenal de la Sierra, Spain

Saturn, at top right, off Beta Scorpii in the head of Scorpius, March 2015. Antares is the yellow star at lower left. The field is rich in colourful blue & yellow reflection and red & magentia emission nebulas. I shot this the morning of March 28, 2015 from Silver City, New Mexico, with the 135mm telephoto at f/2.2 for a stack of 4 x 1.5-minute exposures with the Canon 5D MkII at ISO 800, plus two additional exposures of the same length taken through the Kenko Softon A filter and layered in Photoshop to add the star glows.

The famous "Horse Head" Nebula is situated just off the leftmost (eastern) star (Alnitak) of Orion's belt. The most recognizable feature, the "horse head" is actually a dark cloud of dust and gas about 1375 light years from Earth and juxtaposing against a could of glowing hydrogen gas.

---------------

Data from two cold and clear evenings of

December 3-4, 2016 (yes 2016!)

at Mercey Hot Spring, California

L: 8 x 5 min

R: 7 x 5 min

G: 7 x 5 min

B: 6 x 5 min

Ha: 8 x 10 min

(Total integration time of 3.7 hours)

(All Binned 1x1)

QSI 690

AT6RC with field flattener

(Note that the diagonal streak near the bottom left is not a satellite trail. It's actually one of the diffraction spikes from the nearby star Alnitak, one of the stars in Orion's belt)

An underrated area of the Gamma Cygni nebula IC 1318 - vdB 134 is a reflection nebula, reflecting the light of ω1 Cygni about 869 ly distant.

Toward the bottom of the frame is planetary nebula PLN 86 + 5 1.

128 * 3min lights OSC data with a Skywatcher 8" Quattro and Neodymium filter, lots of biases, flats and darks processed in APP, PI and Affinity.

A rich starfield in the constellation of Vulpecula the Fox, in the Milky Way, with a mix of nebulosity. At bottom is the Coathanger asterism of stars, aka Collinder 399, or Brocchi's Cluster. At top left is the emission nebula NGC 6820. Other dark nebulas from the Lynds Dark Nebula catalogue populate the field. The blue glow above the Coathanger is reflection nebula that does not appear to have a number from any of the usual catalogues. A small reflection nebula around the blue stars at right is van den Bergh 126. The small round red emission nebula at lower left is Sharpless 2-82. The yellow star at top right is Anser, or Alpha Vulpeculae. The pervasive interstellar dust in the area tints the starfield yellow.

This is a stack of 10 x 6-minute exposures with the Sharpstar 61EDPH III refractor at f/4.4 and the filter-modified Canon R at ISO 800 on the Astro-Physics 600E mount autoguided with the MGEN III guider. No filter employed other than a UV/IR Cut filter.

A super wide field view of the constellation Orion. Shot with the Canon 6D and 70-200mm f/4L IS lens at 70mm stopped down to f/5.6 at ISO3200. This is a combination of 5 minute exposures totalling up to a 2 and a half hour exposure. Shot from Ilford, New South Wales, Australia.

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Central zone of the overlapping reflection nebulae with lines sculpted by the magnetic fields of the stars.

See previous image for technical details.

The Merope nebula is at 10 oclock - NGC 1435

The Electra nebula at 6 oclock - vdB 20

The Maia nebula is at 3 oclock - NGC 1432

Captured using iTelescope T24 at the Sierra Remote Observatory in Auberry, California.

Equipment: Planewave 24" CDK, FLI-PL09000 CCD camera, Planewave Ascension 200HR mount, Astrodon LRGB filters with a total imaging time of 60 minutes.

The Witch Head Nebula and the bright star Rigel shine brightly in this image. A 3 hour exposure made up of 60 exposures shot at ISO3200 using the Canon 6D and Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS lens stopped down to f/5.6. Shot from Bretti Reserve in New South Wales, Australia.

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Pleiades star cluster, single 60 minute exposure on Kodak Portra 400, taken in october 2024 with my Pentax 105 SDP apo refractor telescope (670 mm focal length). I used a Nikon F80 camera body. Negative was scanned with Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED, processing in PixInsight and Photoshop.

This is an excellent capture for Portra 400 in just 1 hour. I really like the nebula color, bright stars show absolutely no halation, unlike in the image of the same target taken on Fuji Superia X-TRA 400 that I posted previously.

The Iris Nebula (aka NGC 7023, Caldwell 4, LBN 487, VDB 139) is lit up by its bright central star.

See on Fluidr

To see more of my work and to buy prints visit www.jklovelacephotography.com/pages/space

A mosaic of the Sword and Belt region of Orion the Hunter, showing the diverse array of colourful nebulas in the area, including: curving Barnard’s Loop, the Horsehead Nebula below the left star of the Belt, Alnitak, and the Orion Nebula itself as the bright region in the Sword.

Also in the field are numerous faint blue reflection nebulas. The reflection nebula M78 is at top embedded in a dark nebula, and the pinkish NGC 2024 or Flame Nebula is above Alnitak. The bright orange-red star at far right is W Orionis, a type M4 long-period variable star.

This is a 4-panel mosaic with each panel made of 5 x 2.5-minute exposures with the 135mm Canon L-series telephoto wide open at f/2 and the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1250. The night was somewhat hazy which added natural glows on the stars. No filter was employed here. The camera was on the iOptron Sky-Tracker for tracking but no guiding. Shot from outside Quailway Cottage near Portal, Arizona, Dec 7, 2015. All stacking and stitching performed in Photoshop CC 2015. Stacking done with median combine stack mode to eliminate geosat trails through the fields.

The Pleiades are the 7 daughters of Pleione the sea nymph and Atlas, the dude who holds up the sky. Pleione and Atlas have thier own nearby stars but they're just to the left outside the frame of this image). So Atlas was forced to hold up the sky, and Orion saw his chance to get some nookie. Orion chased them around for quite a while before Zeus took pity on the sisters and changed them into doves. They flew off into the sky and turned into stars. The constellation Orion pursues them through the sky to this day.

Generally when you look at the Pleiades, you only see six stars. There are several conflicting stories about what happened to the seventh. Merope married a mortal and is supposed to have faded away in shame, or Electra faded away in grief after the fall of Troy (her son founded Troy), etc. The weird part is the star that we generally don't see is Celaeno. Asterope is actually made up of two stars, both dimmer than Celaeno, but to the naked eye, we see them as one, brighter star.

The Pleiades are one of the more recognizable objects in the night sky. They appear as 5 or 6 somewhat dim stars clustered together very tightly. They also feature prominently on the Subaru Logo. This isn't surprising since Subaru is the Japaneses name for the Pleiades.

In reality, the Pleiades are an open cluster of hundreds of stars who happen to be plowing into some interstellar hydrogen. The light from the stars lights up the dark hydrogen creating a reflection nebula.

1000mm focal length

F/4.9 (203mm aperture newtonian telescope)

ISO1600

9 exposures, 2 minutes each.

The processing on these was incredibly involved because my telescope cannot track stars for two minutes unguided. Briefly:

aligned and stacked using sigma clipping in IRIS

Split into seperate red, green, and blue channels

Ran Richardson Lucy deconvolutions (60 iterations) on each channel

Then I took several different portions of each channel and combined them (Adding some blue into the green channel and some green into the red channel in the process) in photoshop in sort of an HDR'ish manner.

Given the constraints of my equipment, I'm ecstatic at how this turned out. :)

A redo of my earlier DSLR data with some later CCD h-alpha layered in to enhance the nebulosity.

Some cropping as well, and due to the small sensor the CCD data only covers the section directly around the cave.

I don't think i'll be attempting to mosaic the rest of this image with the CCD - too much work doing LRG and B for it!

Gonna save the CCD for the small targets. :P

This frames the field in the southern constellation of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown, that is rich in bluish reflection nebulosity and brownish dusty absorption nebulas. Also in the field, but much more distant than the nebulas, is the globular star cluster NGC 6723.

The dark nebula complex is sometimes called the Anteater Nebula. Australian observers call the dense opaque area (the body of the Anteater) the "Field of Nothing," as a telescope at moderate power aimed at the area shows nothing at all, not even a star. The blue reflection nebulas are catalogued as NGC 6726, NGC 6727 and NGC 6729. The entire area is dubbed the Corona Australis Cloud Complex, or Dark Nebula Complex.

The field of view is about 3° by 2°.

Technical:

This is a stack of 19 x 4-minute exposures, unfiltered, through the Askar APO120 refractor with its 0.8x Reducer/Flattener for f/5.6 and 670mm focal length, and the Canon Ra camera at ISO 800. Taken October 3, 2024 from the Quailway Cottage near Rodeo, New Mexico, but in Arizona, at 32° N latitude. On the Astro-Physics AP400 mount, autoguided with the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone auto-guider. The field was low in the south in the early evening, and prone to some blurring and atmospheric refraction, but was still high enough to provide good sky quality for 80 minutes of shooting.

A mosaic of the Belt and Sword region of Orion the Hunter, revealing the diverse and colourful array of nebulas in the area, all a part of a vast star-formation complex. The Orion Nebula itself, Messier 42, is below centre, overexposed here. But also visible are the large red Barnardâs Loop, at left, and the blue Witchhead Nebula, IC 2118, at right, illuminated by the bright star Rigel. The Horsehead Nebula is visible below the left start of the Belt of Orion. Above it is the pinkish Flame Nebula, NGC 2024, and above it the bluish M78 reflection nebula complex.

This is a 4-panel mosaic shot Jan 1, 2016 from home on a very clear night, though with some sky gradients. Each panel is a stack of 5 x 3-minute exposures at f/2.8 with the Canon L-Series 135mm lens, on the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1000. The camera was tracking but unguided on the AP Mach One mount. Orion was on the meridian but even so there was a lot of difference in sky brightness between panel segments. Also, trails from geostationary satellites appeared in each frame, as Orion was then near the opposition point, due south at midnight. I eliminated these with a Median combine stack mode for each panel segment. Plus from my latitude southern Orion tends to sit in brighter sky gradients, so the lower panels were brighter and more sky fogged than the upper panels.

All stacking and stitching in Photoshop CC 2015.

M45, The Pleiades star cluster in Taurus, with surrounding nebulosity and dust clouds illuminated by the hot blue stars.

This is a stack of 8 x 5-minute exposures with the Nikon D810a at ISO 1600 through the TMB 92mm refractor at f/4.4. The photogenic diffraction spikes are added with the Astronomy Tools actions from Noel Carboni.

- MASPhotography Getty Images Gallery

22.8 hours of data taken over 15 nights between 3/8/2018 and 7/3/2018.

This is by far the most difficult shot I've tried to this point. I've started to shoot Iris several times in the past and always given up with just a few hours of lousy data. I still feel like my processing needs a big shot in the arm, but I like the overall image. I reserve the right to reprocess. :)

Gear:

- ASI 1600MM-C

- ZWO EFW Filter Wheel

- Astrodon LRGB Gen2 E-Series Tru-Balance Filters

- Canon 400 mm f/2.8 IS

- Orion HDX 110 (EQ8) Mount

- QHY 5L-II guidecamera

- Orion ST-80 guidescope

- QHY Polemaster

Software:

-PHD2

-Sequence Generator Pro

-Platesolve 2

-Stellarium

-pixinsight

-Lightroom

L: 1128 - 60 s lights @ gain 0, -10, -15 c

R: 50 - 90 s lights @ gain 139, -10 c

G: 56 - 90 s lights @ gain 139, -10 c

B: 54 - 90 s lights @ gain 139, -10 c

20 flats per filter

master darks from 30 frames

Superbias from 300 frames in Pixinsight

LRGB 3h50m total integration

Skywatcher Esprit 120

QHY 268 M

AP 1100GTO

About this image:

A narrowband Hydrogen-Alpha (Hα) study of the Flaming Star Nebula (also known as IC 405, SH 2-229, and Caldwell 31) and the Tadpole Nebula (also known as IC 410 and NGC 1893).

IC 405 is an emission and reflection nebula in the constellation Auriga. At the H-Alpha wavelength, this is mostly a study of the emission of Hydrogen in the region.

IC 405 and IC 410 lies about 1,500 and 12,400 light-years from Earth respectively.

Technical Info:

Lights/Subs total integration time: 16 hours.

8 hours per 2 panel wide-field mosaic.

96 x 600 sec. (48 x 600 sec. per panel).

5nm Hydrogen-Alpha at a wavelength of 656.3nm.

William Optics Star 71mm f/4.9 Imaging APO Refractor.

QHY163M Camera sensor cooled to -15°C.

Calibration frames: Bias, Darks and Flats.

SGP Mosaic and Framing Wizard.

PlaneWave PlateSolve 2 via SGP.

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight, Starnet++ and Straton was used for star separation, and final processing was done in Photoshop.

Astrometry Info:

Center (RA, Dec): 80.229, 33.915

Center RA, hms: 05h 20m 54.877s

Center Dec, dms: +33° 54' 54.358"

Size: 4.58 x 3.66 deg.

Radius: 2.931 deg.

Pixel scale: 10.3 arcsec/pixel.

Orientation: Up is 17.2 degrees E of N.

View an Annotated Sky Chart of this image.

View this image in the WorldWideTelescope.

Photo usage and Copyright:

Medium-resolution photograph licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Terms (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For High-resolution Royalty Free (RF) licensing, contact me via my site: Contact.

Martin

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Shot from near Alder Springs, CA, on 2016-09-04 with a Nikon D80 piggybacked on a Celestron Edge HD on a CGEM mount. Stack of 7 5 minute exposures at ISO 1600 and f/4.5 with a 70-300mm lens at 70 mm focal length. Stacked and processed in PixInsight. Final touches in PI and PS CS 5.1.

Summer's coming! I love all of the dust in this area. I've tried several times to get this part of the sky and always had issues with the images. I think I finally got one.

Photo Stats

Camera: Nikon D300s (unmodified)

Exposure: 7x5min (35min total)

Lens: Nikon 50mm f/1.8 @f/2.8

ISO: 640

Mount: Kenko Skymemo

Aberkenfig, South Wales

Lat 51.542 N Long 3.593 W

Skywatcher 254mm Newtonian Reflector, Olympus E410 at prime focus. EQ6 Syntrek Mount.

36 frames used in final processing (12x60s, 14x50s & 10x40s all at ISO 800). Also 10 dark frames at 60s.

Processed with Deep Sky Stacker and final levels adjusted with G.I.M.P.

Although captured under what seemed to be cloudless sky, the seeing conditions and transparency were not at their best. The light pollution at my location is also presents a challenge. A fairly reasonable outcome with the equipment used.

The image displays some coma towards the edges. This is is one drawback of a parabolic f/4.8 Newtonian.

I am back from Cyprus and finally managed to sit down and start processing images from the trip. This first one is the one I have been waiting to do since last summer. I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to deep space widefield astrophotography targets, so I only discovered this little gem last year when I was doing milky way shots.

This little gem is located in Scorpio Constellation. It is called The Rho Ophiuchi Complex and is made up of several different objects. Rho Ophiuchi is the bright triple star surrounded by the blue reflection nebula to the right of the image. M4 globular cluster can be seen at the bottom. Despite its apparent association with the surrounding nebulae, M4 is actually a much more distant background object. To the right of M4 is the blue star Sigma Scorpii. And to the left of M4 is the brightest object in the frame - the red supergiant Antares. Antares' strong stellar wind has created the relatively cool yellow nebula IC 4606 that seems to engulf the star. Finally, the dark nebula spanning across the frame is the Dark River. This nebula is created from dust that is in front of the surrounding nebula and causes us to see it in silhouette.

Exposure details - 42 x 100s at f4, ISO 3200.

I wanted to do longer exposures however, even in summer, this area is high enough above the horizon only for a short time. My first night was interrupted with clouds and i was limited by moonlight on my next attempt.

I am really happy with the results but it's a target I will go back to eventually in the future...

This is a stack of 32 images of M78, mostly shot from the Joshua Tree Astronomy Arts Theater in Joshua Tree, CA. I added 10 5 minute exposures shot this past weekend, and I used drizzle frames generated in PixInsight as part of the stack. All images were shot with an Atik 314L+ color CCD on a Celestron Edge HD 9.25" scope at f/2.3 with HyperStar. Preprocessing in Nebulosity, stacking and initial processing in PixInsight, final processing in PS CS 5.1.

Image center is at (J2000):

RA: 5h 46m 43s

DEC: 0° 7' 5"

A new target for me. From my north-facing balcony location, I have a five-hour window to shoot this nebula before it disappears behind my roofline. The image is composed of RGB data captured with my monochrome camera -- about 5 hours through each filter.

From Wiki: NGC 1909 is an extremely faint (apparent magnitude 13) reflection nebula believed to be an ancient supernova remnant or gas cloud illuminated by nearby supergiant star Rigel in the constellation of Orion. The nebula lies in the Eridanus Constellation, about 1000 light-years from Earth.

There are a number of galaxies in the image. Most of them along the LH edge. I particularly like the barred spiral, NGC 1720. I'm surprised that the structure shows up as well as it does.

Rio Rancho NM Bortle 5 zone,

Dec 3-6, 2023

William Optics Redcat 51

ZWO 183mm pro

ZWO 30mm f/4 mini guide scope and ZWO 120 Mini

Optolong RGB filters

6 hours for each filter

ZWO ASI Air Pro

Sky-Watcher HEQ5

Darks GraXpert dithering

Gain 111 at -10C

Processed in DSS and PS

IC5146 cocoon nebula,

Found in Cygnus among a giant dense star field - looking remarkably like it's name - a bundle of red emission nebula, reflection nebula and open star cluster, makes a great astrophotography target - i had trouble with a dslr approach, not getting any blue reflection nebulosity or the smoky dust - a lot of this was the strong light-pollution filters i had to use, but with the tiny sensor and RGB filters LP was less of an issue and the full nebula started to show through. I deliberately avoided any extra filters and stuck with just the clear/IR block for luminance and also avoided binning the colour data mostly because resizing is a hassle when stacking but i wanted as much quality as i could squeeze from the ancient low-res camera, even though the L-RGB image got very little detail from colour data it couldn't hurt to leave the 1x1 binning for the RG & B filter runs :) as for post-processing, it is still very rough and ready, mostly my poor handling of the data and inexperience with the LRGB approach - i'm pretty sure there is more to the image than i've been able to coax out and will likely go back and add more if i get chance. -

6 x 300s

4 x 600s - luminance

6x300s Red, blue and green

scope; ED80

CCD 16IC mono

Mount: EQ6

Guiding: 9x50mm finderguider / ASI120

EQASCOM, CDC , PHD2

The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, are an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky.

The cluster is dominated by got blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Reflection nebulae around the brightest stars were once thought to be left over material from the formation of the cluster, but are now considered likely to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing.

Taken a year after my first attempt ( flic.kr/p/2e9R1Dq ) with some equipment and knowledge upgrades, I'm happy with the progress. This cluster is simple elegance in my eye and will never get old.

A total of 3.5 hours of exposure time using 140 90 second exposures.

astrob.in/xv1g4r/0/

Red rivals in Scorpius, with bright Mars above dimmer - and more yellow here — Antares below embedded in yellow reflection nebulas. The area is rife with colourful reflection and emission nebulas, making this one of the most colourfull regions of the deep sky. The hot blue stars of the head of Scorpius are at right.

This is a stack of 5 x 3-minute exposures with the 135mm telephoto lens at f/2.8 and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. Some light clouds were moving in. They likely add the glow around Mars.

Gum 14/15 Vela Complex (HOO)

Gum 14 (RCW27 or Ru64; the Pie) is a large emission nebula (left of image) which contains many types of objects; Emission, dark and reflection nebulae (NGC2626), an open cluster (NGC2671) and planetary nebulae too (PK259+00.1, PK260+00.1 and PK260+00.2)

The beatiful stawberry like object (bottom centre) is an HII region Gum15

On the right of couse we can see parts of the famous Vela SNR.

More details; astrob.in/mi88mc/0/

The Pleiades (M45), sometimes referred to as The Seven Sisters. Shown here is the blue reflection nebula which surrounds the stars along with integrated flux nebula. This is a combination of 30 x 3 minute exposures taken with my Canon 6D and Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS Lens.

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MESSIER 16, NGC 6611 - EAGLE NEBULA, STAR QUEEN NEBULA

Messier 16 is a conspicuous region of active star formation, appearing in the constellation Serpens Cauda. This giant cloud of interstellar gas and dust is commonly known as the Eagle Nebula, and has already created a cluster of young stars. The nebula is also referred to the Star Queen Nebula and as IC 4703; the cluster is NGC 6611.

The cluster was discovered by Philippe Loys de Cheseaux in 1745-1746, who made no mention of the nebula. Charles Messier independently rediscovered the cluster in 1764, and described its stars as "enmeshed in a faint glow", suggesting that he discovered the nebula as well.

The Eagle Nebula lies some 7,000 light years away in the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm of our galaxy - the next arm inward from us. At this distance, the cluster's angular diameter corresponds to a linear size of about 15 light years. The nebula extends much farther out, to dimensions of about 70 x 55 light years. M 16 might form one giant complex with M 17, the Omega Nebula, to the south in Sagittarius.

M 16's stellar swarm is only about 5.5 million years old, with its hottest, youngest stars of spectral type O6. Excited by high-energy ultraviolet radiation from these massive stars, this great cloud of interstellar gas glows by fluorescence.

RA: 18h 19m 57.2s

DEC: -13° 46’ 26.7“

Location: Serpens

Distance: 7,000 ly

Captured May 2018

Fiel Of view: 3.87 x 2.55 deg

Total acquisition time of 4 hours.

Technical Details

iTelescope T12

Data acquisition & processing: Nicolas ROLLAND

Location: Siding Spring Observatory, Australia

Ha 16 x 300sec

OIII 16 x 300sec

SII 16 x 300sec

Optics: Takahashi FSQ106 EDX3 @F/D 5.0

Mount: Paramount ME

CCD: FLI Microline 11002

Pre Processing: Pixinsight

Post Processing: Photoshop CC

Full resolution on Astrobin