Aldebaran and the Hyades

Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello

The Hyades (also Melotte 25 or Collinder 50) is the nearest open cluster to the Solar System at a distance of ~153 ly (47 pc) to the cluster center. The cluster consists of a roughly spherical group of hundreds of stars sharing the same age, place of origin, chemical content, and motion through space.

From the perspective, the Hyades Cluster appears in Taurus, where its brightest stars form a "V" shape along with the still brighter red giant Aldebaran. However, Aldebaran is unrelated to the Hyades, as it is located much closer to Earth.

A framing of the northern spring constellations of Leo (at right) and Coma Berenices (at left), the latter marked by the large star cluster Melotte 111. The small and obscure constellation of Leo Minor is at top right.

This is a stack of 10 x 2-minute exposures with the Canon RF28-70mm lens at 34mm and f/3.5 and on the filter-modified (by AstroGear) Canon R camera at ISO 800, on the Star Adventurer tracker. An additional single 2-minute exposure through a Kase/Alyn Wallace StarGlow filter and layered and blended in Photoshop added the photogenic star glows, to accentutate the constellation patterns and star colours. Taken from home March 16, 2023.

The large star cluster in Coma Berenices known officially as Melotte 111, at right, with two of the most prominent galaxies in Coma at left: NGC 4559 at top and the Needle Galaxy, NGC 4565, at bottom. Several other fainter galaxies are in the field, including NGC 4494 between the Needle Galaxy and the star cluster, but looking very star-like at this image scale.

I shot this April 11, 2021 on a fairly clear night as a test of the new SharpStar 94mm EDPH refractor telescope and its matching field flattener/reducer. A bit of passing haze added a touch of star glows.

This is a stack of 20 x 6-minute exposures at ISO 800 with the Canon EOS Ra, autoguided on the Astro-Physics Mach 1 mount with the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone autoguided set to dither 5 pixels between each exposure. No dark frames or LENR were applied. The field of view is about 3.3° x 5°.

I'm such a beginner to astrophotography and there are so many things to remember that I forgot to take a dark frame to eliminate hot pixels so had to do them by hand.

I took 8 photos at 90 seconds each using the 5D4 and 70-200mm lens at 200mm. A Sky-watcher Star Adventurer was used for tracking. I used the free software program Sequator to stack the images. Talk about dipping one's toe in the water - I haven't much clue and it's a huge learning curve.

The Coathanger star cluster and asterism in the Milky Way in southern Cygnus, aka Collinder 399 or Brocchi’s Cluster. The field is similar to what a pair of large binoculars would show. I shot this from home Nov. 25, 2019.

This is a stack of 6 x 2-minute unguided exposures with the 200mm Canon telephoto at f/2.8 and stock Canon 6D MkII at ISO 1600. An additional exposure taken through the Kenko Softon A filter adds the star glows. All were with the camera on the Fornax LighTrack II tracker.

Brocchi's Cluster (Cr 399)

Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello

This asterism (not a real star cluster) is made up of 10 stars from 5th to 7th magnitude which form a "coathanger".

Brocchi’s Cluster is listed in many texts as having been discovered by Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna in 1654, and it is named for American amateur astronomer Dalmero Francis Brocchi, who created a map of it in the 1920s. However, the first recorded unaided eye sighting was by famous Persian astronomer ’Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi in 964.

Under a dark sky can be seen at the naked eye.

127ED@600mm / EOS4000D + Avalom m-zero Obs (FoV 1.4°x2.0°)

Comet 46P/Wirtanen close to the Pleiades (M45) on 16 December 2018 (imaged from Southern Africa, after a thunder shower and in between clear gaps in partly cloudy conditions).

I kept the exposures a bit shorter than I would have liked, and rather pushed the ISO a bit higher due to the cloud cover that was increasing. Luckily it was clear towards the North for just long enough to take the series of photos required for stacking, and despite the weather, the Astronomical Seeing was actually really excellent after the rain.

The Comet's faint tail was only visible in darker skies with longer exposures. This Comet has a beautiful bright green Coma (or head). The green color is caused by Cyanogen (CN) and diatomic Carbon (C2), which glows in the green part of the Electromagnetic Spectrum of Light when illuminated by the Sun in space.

Geocentric Distance:

0.0775 AU (Astronomical Unit).

30 Lunar distances.

11.5 Million km.

7.1 Million miles.

Gear:

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR Lens.

Celestron AdvancedVX Telescope Mount.

Optolong L-Pro Clip-In Filter for Nikon.

Nikon D750 DSLR.

Lights/Subs:

46 x 60 sec. ISO 3200 exposures.

Calibration Frames:

30 x Bias

20 x Darks

Astrometry Info:

Center RA, Dec: 58.071, 22.397

Center RA, hms: 03h 52m 17.067s

Center Dec, dms: +22° 23' 47.549"

Size: 8.45 x 5.68 deg

Radius: 5.089 deg

Pixel scale: 19 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: Up is 130 degrees E of N

View an Annotated Sky Chart for this image.

View this image in the WorldWideTelescope.

Processing:

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,

and finished in Photoshop.

Carl Sagan on Comets:

youtu.be/1hlONoWw39M

People's reaction to Comets, excerpt from Cosmos S01E04:

Time code: 13:18

"By 1910, Halley's comet returned once more. But this time, astronomers using a new tool, the spectroscope had discovered cyanogen gas in the tail of a comet. Now, cyanogen is a poison. The Earth was to pass through this poisonous tail. The fact that the gas was astonishingly, fabulously thin reassured almost nobody. For example, look at the headlines in the Los Angeles Examiner for May 9, 1910: "Say, Has That Comet 'Cyanogened' You Yet?" "Entire Human Race Due For Free Gaseous Bath. Expect High Jinks." Or take this from the San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, 1910: "Comet Comes And Husband Reforms." "Comet Parties Now Fad In New York." Amazing stuff! In 1910, people were holding comet parties, not so much to celebrate the end of the world as to make merry before it happened. There were entrepreneurs who were hawking comet pills. I think I'm gonna take one for later. And there were those who were selling gas masks to protect against the cyanogen. And comet nuttiness didn't stop in 1910." - Carl Sagan, Cosmos.

This image is part of the Legacy Series.

Flickr Explore:

2018-12-19

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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L'Amas NGC 1502 et l'astérisme de la cascade de Kemble (Kemble 1) sont situés dans la constellation de la Girafe. L'astérisme est formé par l'alignement d'une vingtaine d'étoiles comprises entre la cinquième et la dixième magnitude, et qui s'étale dans le ciel sur un diamètre apparent équivalent à cinq pleines lunes (wikipedia).

Kemble's Cascade is an asterism located in the constellation Camelopardalis, next to the star cluster NGC 1502.

Acquisition:

Nikon D5300 + Zenithstar 73

iOptron CEM26 + iPolar

Filtre Optolong L-Pro

ZWO ASI224MC + WO Uniguide 120mm

Astro Photography Tool (APT) & PHD2

Best 35 de 42 x 3min -- ISO400

Traitement/processing :

Siril & Gimp

AstroM1

(rsi1.2)

This is the Trifid Nebula, a combination dark nebula and reflection nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius.

The blue gas and dust is highlighted by light reflected from the nearby star.

In the lower right is the open star cluster Messier 21.

This was created with 2 x 8 minute RGB images with an unmodded Canon 70D and Skywatcher ED100 Refractor, stacked in DSS and post processed in Lightroom.

“The butterfly is a flying flower,

The flower a tethered butterfly.”

Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun

Pentas lanceolata

Egyptian Starcluster

DSCN1483-002

Photographed Savannah, Georgia, 2 December, 2019

Also known as M45, the Seven Sisters, Seven Stars, SED, Matariki (New Zealand Maori), Subaru (Japan), or Bitang Skora (Borneo Bidayuh) is an open cluster in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters, and is probably the best known, and is certainly the most obvious to the naked eye.

The cluster is dominated by hot blue stars which have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust that forms a faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster (hence the alternate name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium that the stars are currently passing through. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will have dispersed due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.

Cannon EOS 450D unmod , Sigma 120-400mm F4.5/5.6 APO

5 min x 5 light frames & 5 min x 3 dark frames

Details: photos at 300mm, f/5.6, ISO 1600 Processed: Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop CS3

Date: 26/10/2008

This is another shot taken using my home-built Star Tracker, the same tracking mount that I used to create the all-night time-lapse from the summit of Haleakala on Maui. For this picture, I tilted the tracker so that the rotation axis was pointed towards Polaris and thus parallel to Earth's rotational axis. I set the speed and direction so that when the tracker is turned on, the camera's field of view would follow the movement of the sky allowing long exposure shots of the stars.

The field of view here covers most of the constellation Sagittarius and the central part of our Milky Way Galaxy. This part of the sky is rich with targets for small backyard telescopes. Many of the best can be seen in this photo. It was pretty awesome being able to see this part of the Milky Way so high in the sky while in Maui (compared to Oregon at least).

Happy Monday!

Technical info about the image:

Object: Sagittarius and the Milky Way

Mount: home-made star tracker

Imaging lens: Nikon 50mm 1.4G stopped down to f/4.0

Imaging FL: 50mm

Imaging camera: unmodified Nikon D700

Lights: 80x60s (1h 20m) at ISO 1600

Calibration: none

Guide Scope: unguided

Processing: images stacked with Deep Sky Stacker with final processing in Photoshop CS5.

This is an open cluster in Orion that, when rotated and flipped, resembles the number 37 written in the stars.

Subframes were shot on 2022-01-20 and 01-21. Taken with Optolong RGB filters and an Atik 414-EX mono camera on a Celestron Edge HD 925 with an 0.63x focal reducer. This gives a focal length of 1525 mm.

R channel: 70 frames of 30 s exposures

G channel: 77 frames of 30 s exposures

B channel: 51 frames of 30 s exposures

After preprocessing and compositing the stacks in PixInsight, color was calibrated using the Photometric Color Calibration tool. I played with the saturation a bit and knocked down the background in Photoshop.

March 24, 2023

Naples, FL

Equipment--

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED 80, field flattener (no reducer), 480mm focal length

Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro

Camera: ZWO ASI204MC-Pro

Guide scope: Williams Optics 50mm guide scope

Guide camera: ZWO ASI120MM-S

Software: NINA, PHD2

Imaging--

Lights: 45x60s

Darks, Flats, DarkFlats, Bias: assorted

Sensor temp: -10.0

Filter: Optolong L-Pro

Sky: Bortle 5 (nominal)

Post processing--

Software: PixInsight, Photoshop

The constellation of Cassiopeia the Queen, framed with the 85mm lens and including many star clusters: M52 at right, the Double Cluster at left, and M103 and NGC 457 on the left side of the W of five stars that marks Cassiopeia. The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, is at upper left, and the Pacman Nebula, NGC 281, is at lower centre...This is a stack of 4 x 2-minute exposures at f/2 with the 85mm Rokinon lens, and modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. A final exposure taken through the Kenko Softon A diffusion filter adds the star glows. Taken December 11, 2017 at the Quailway Cottage in southeastern Arizona near Portal.

An unguided image of the open star cluster M34 in Perseus taken with a Canon 7D MKII using a Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens on a Celestron AVX equatorial mount. Created with Deep Sky Stacker, Lightroom, and Photoshop Elements using 15 images and 5 dark files. At a distance of 1500 light years it is one of the closer Messier objects to the Earth.

Aberkenfig, South Wales

Lat 51.542 N Long 3.593 W

Skywatcher 254mm Newtonian Reflector, Nikon D780 at prime focus with Skywatcher coma corrector. EQ6 Syntrek Mount.

An improvement using a Nikon & coma corrector compared to a previous attempt on 20th July 2019 using an Olympus E410.

Imaging session commenced 00:17 UT with the transparency of the sky quite reasonable.

50 x 25s at ISO 1600

Also 18 dark frames & 18 flats.

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

Best viewed using the expansion arrows.

M39 (ou NGC 7092) est un amas ouvert situé dans la constellation du Cygne. Il a été découvert par Charles Messier en 1764. il est situé approximativement à 825 années-lumière. C'est un amas assez modeste et peu photographié, surtout qu'il est dans une zone avec de nombreuses nébulosités, dont des nébuleuses des plus impressionnantes dans le ciel d'été...

M39 is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Cygnus.

Acquisition:

Nikon D5300 + Zenithstar 73

iOptron CEM26 + iPolar

Optolong L-Pro

ZWO ASI224MC + WO Uniguide 120mm

Astro Photography Tool (APT) & PH2D

22x2min -- ISO400

Traitement/processing :

Siril & Gimp

AstroM1

(rsi1.2)

Taken w/ Skywatcher ED80, QHYCCD Polemaster, Skywatcher EQM-35 & Nikon D7500.

50 x 60s lights @ ISO 800, ~45 dark, ~80 flat, ~100 bias, stacked in DSS and post-processed in Photoshop & PixInsight

The Botanical Garden is clad in Winter browns and grays and here and there some new green. But inside the Butterfly House there's color although only few Air Gliders. Here then is another insect, an Ant. It's searching Scarlet, but I couldn't make out for what even after watching half an hour...

For a short description of this wonderfully bright Pentas see www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/32949156766/in/photoli....

There is a star cluster and nebula designated IC 348 in the constellation Perseus. It is just above the horizon in the north east at dark in late November in the northern hemisphere. It lies at the southern edge of the winter Milky Way between the Pleiades and the bright star Capella and goes directly overhead near midnight. It is approximately 1500 light years from Earth.

The very bright star Atik, also known as Omicron Persei is the brightest star in the cluster and lights up what we can see in the region, producing reflections from the surrounding dust and exciting hydrogen making a extensive red emission nebula. This star is just left of center in the image. It has a magnitude of 3.85 but is attenuated by nearly a magnitude by the intervening dust. The dust that appears white is behind the star and is seen in reflected light. The brown and black regions is dust between us and the star and blocks or partially blocks the visible light from stars behind it. The large reddish area is emission from excited and ionized hydrogen that is most likely created by Atik. This red region is about 25 light years wide.

The image was made in Mule Creek, New Mexico using my Takahashi Epsilon 160ED Hyperbolic Newtonian telescope and ZWO ASI6200 MM Pro monochromatic camera with a set of LRGB and Ha Chroma filters. The image was constructed in PixInsight from 129 2 min L, 40 1 min each R, G, and B and 62 3 min Ha exposures - 311 images totaling 9 hours and 24 min of integration. All images were made in one night on November 12, 2023.

IC348_region_LHaRGB_MuleCreek_NM_231112_RQFugate

On August 26th, the last quarter Moon was in very close conjunction with the Pleiades star cluster.

It was beautiful to see through binoculars, but very difficult to photograph due to the huge difference in brightness between the Moon and the stars.

I tried to create an image close to what one could see through binoculars. I combined 9 shots to get an HDR picture showing the stars, details of the Moon, and a faint Earthshine (exaggerated compared to what could be seen with the unaided eyes).

Nikon Z7 & Nikkor Z 180-600 420mm / ISO250 / f8 / HDR of 9 shots from 1/60s to 4s exposure.

Taken w/ William Optics Redcat 51, QHYCCD Polemaster, Skywatcher EQM-35, Nikon D7500.

190 x 90s lights @ ISO 800, ~45 dark, ~80 flat, ~100 bias, stacked in DSS and post-processed in Photoshop & PixInsight

The Beehive Cluster (M44), an open star cluster in Cancer taken with a Rokinon 135mm f/2 lens. Ten 3 second images at ISO 3200 and f/2 were combined with DeepSkyStacker and processed with Gimp and Lightroom.

Sweeping spiral arms extend from NGC 4536, littered with bright blue clusters of star formation and red clumps of hydrogen gas shining among dark lanes of dust. The galaxy’s shape may seem a little unusual, and that’s because it’s what’s known as an “intermediate galaxy”: not quite a barred spiral, but not exactly an unbarred spiral, either - a hybrid of the two.

NGC 4536 is also a starburst galaxy, in which star formation is happening at a tremendous rate that uses up the gas in the galaxy relatively quickly, by galactic standards. Starburst galaxies can happen due to gravitational interactions with other galaxies or - as seems to be the case for NGC 4536 - when gas is packed into a small region. The bar-like structure of NGC 4536 may be driving gas inwards toward the nucleus, giving rise to a crescendo of star formation in a ring around the nucleus. Starburst galaxies birth lots of hot blue stars that burn fast and die quickly in explosions that unleash intense ultraviolet light (visible in blue), turning their surroundings into glowing clouds of ionized hydrogen, called HII regions (visible in red).

NGC 4536 is approximately 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered in 1784 by astronomer William Herschel. Hubble took this image of NGC 4536 as part of a project to study galactic environments to understand connections between young stars and cold gas, particularly star clusters and molecular clouds, throughout the local universe.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lee (Space Telescope Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

#NASAMarshall #NASA #NASAHubble #Hubble #NASAGoddard #galaxy #DwarfGalaxy #StarCluster #StarburstGalaxy #SpiralGalaxy

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The Hyades star cluster, with bright yellow Aldebaran, in Taurus, with the smaller, more distant star cluster NGC 1647 at left. The field is similar to that of binoculars.

This is a stack of 5 x 2-minute exposures with the 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. Diffraction spikes added with Astronomy Tools actions for artistic effect.

The Double Cluster in the constellation Perseus is a personal favourite of mine. Easily seen naked eye in dark skies and a delight in a small telescope. Here I present it in a different light surrounded by faintly ionized (red) hydrogen gases. I acquired 16.5 hours of Ha data and blended it into the red and luminance channels. I also acquired 10 hours of LRGB data for a total of 26.5 hours of imaging. The spikes around the stars are from the spider veins that hold the secondary mirror on the telescope. It makes it looks so glittery 😊 Taken with my Ceravolo300mm telescope. 1470mm focal length with an SBIG STX 16803 CCD camera.

47 Tucanae (NGC 104) is a globular star cluster located about 13,000 light years away from Earth. The actual number of stars in this globular cluster is believed to be ~500,000 stars and the core is said to contain nearly 35,000! If planets could exist around the stars in the core of this cluster, one could only imagine what you would see in the day or night sky.

Some details about the image:

Unlike the last object; this image was created by capturing light in the red, green, blue wavelengths. A clear (luminance) filter was used to capture detail.

Filters and Exposures:

Lum bin 1x1; RGB bin 2x2

Lum = 23x120 sec; 30x60 sec

R = 26x120 sec

G = 26x120 sec

B = 25x120 sec

Total integration: ~3.9hrs

Telescope and Camera:

T31 (Planewave 20" (0.51m) CDK)

Camera = FLI-PL09000

Software: AstroPixel Processor, Photoshop

The Heart (IC 1805) and Soul Nebulae (IC 1848) on the left and the Double Cluster (NGC 869 & NGC 884) on the right in the constellation of Cassiopeia as photographed a couple of nights ago from St. Agnes Cornwall with my ultra portable set up (D810a, 135mm).

This a cropped version, without star reduction.

Star clusters are common structures throughout the Universe, each made up of hundreds of thousands of stars all bound together by gravity. This star-filled image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), shows one of them: NGC 1866.

NGC 1866 is found at the very edges of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy located near to the Milky Way. The cluster was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, who catalogued thousands of stars and deep-sky objects during his career.

However, NGC 1866 is no ordinary cluster. It is a surprisingly young globular cluster situated close enough to us that its stars can be studied individually — no mean feat given the mammoth distances involved in studying the cosmos! There is still debate over how globular clusters form, but observations such as this have revealed that most of their stars are old and have a low metallicity. In astronomy, ‘metals’ are any elements other than hydrogen and helium; since stars form heavier elements within their core as they carry out nuclear fusion throughout their lifetimes, a low metallicity indicates that a star is very old, as the material from which it formed was not enriched with many heavy elements. It’s possible that the stars within globular clusters are so old that they were actually some of the very first to form after the Big Bang.

In the case of NGC 1866, though, not all stars are the same. Different populations, or generations, of stars are thought to coexist within the cluster. Once the first generation of stars formed, the cluster may have encountered a giant gas cloud that sparked a new wave of star formation and gave rise to a second, younger, generation of stars — explaining why it seems surprisingly youthful.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA; CC BY 4.0

Amas ouvert M103, également désigné NGC 581, est un amas ouvert situé dans la constellation de Cassiopée. Il a été découvert par Pierre Méchain en avril 1781. M103 est l'un des amas les plus éloignés que l'on connaisse, avec des distances variant de 8000 à 9500 années-lumière de la Terre (wiki)

Aussi dans le champs: Amas ouverts NGC654, NGC659, NGC663, etc.

M103 is an open cluster where a few hundred, mainly very faint, stars figure in Cassiopeia.

Acquisition:

Nikon D5300 + Zenithstar 73

iOptron CEM26 + iPolar

Optolong L-Pro

ZWO ASI224MC + WO Uniguide 120mm

Astro Photography Tool (APT) & PH2D

50x2min -- ISO400

Traitement/processing :

Siril & Gimp

AstroM1

(rsi1.2)

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

Taken from Oxfordshire, UK on the night of 22nd November 2020.

This is probably my favourite night sky object; it's just such a stunning star cluster.

Taken with a William Optics 70mm refractor and Canon 1100D fitted with a SkyTech CLS light pollution clip filter.

ISO-1600 for 90 seconds

48 lights and 26 darks were stacked with Deep Sky Stacker, giving a total exposure time of about 1 hour 10 minutes.

This is a quick process of this data, but I'm planning to combine the images taken during this imaging run with the images I shot in 2018 and 2019 to see how much more detail I can get.

Processing was done in Photoshop CS2 (with Astroflat Pro and RC Astro Tools plugins), Lightroom and Fast Stone Image Viewer

*Ficha técnica:

Imaging telescope: Orion ED80 F7.5

Imaging camera: QHY163M

Mount: Sky-Watcher HEQ5PRO

Guiding telescope: Meade 8x50mm Finder/Guider

Guiding camera: Starlight Xpress Superstar

Software: Pleiades Astrophoto, S.L. PixInsight 1.8 , Astro Photography Tool , Stark Labs PHD 2.5 , Photoshop CS4

Filters: Optolong Lum 1.25" , Optolong Blue 1.25" , Optolong Red 1.25" , Optolong Green 1.25"

*Frames:

Optolong Blue 1.25": 35x60" -10C bin 1x1

Optolong Green 1.25": 34x60" -10C bin 1x1

Optolong Lum 1.25": 105x60" -10C bin 1x1

Optolong Red 1.25": 36x60" -10C bin 1x1

Total exposure: 3.5 horas

Dark frames: ~15

Bortle: 3.00

Site: EBA, Padre Bernardo, GO, Brasil

Behold the celestial spectacle above Kyperounta village in Cyprus, where Agios Arsenios Church stands as a beacon of serenity amidst the cosmic expanse. Captured beneath the radiant arc of the Milky Way galaxy, this photograph transports viewers into a realm of awe-inspiring wonder. Against the backdrop of a clear August night sky, the Milky Way unfurls its celestial tapestry, weaving a mesmerizing dance of stars and cosmic dust. Amidst this celestial ballet, a Persid meteor streaks through the heavens, its luminous trail punctuating the darkness with a fleeting burst of brilliance. With meticulous detail and masterful composition, this image captures the convergence of earthly tranquility and celestial majesty, inviting contemplation of the boundless beauty that lies beyond our earthly confines.

Messier 25, a bright star cluster in Sagittarius, shot from home on a very clear night, August 4, 2019, with the object low in the south.

This is a stack of 6 x 8-minute exposures with the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm apo refractor at f/6 and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 800. I used the AP 6x7 field flattener here. LENR darks subtracted in camera. Diffraction spikes added for artistic effect with Astronomy Tools actions.

This is the conjunction of the 6-day-old waxing Moon, near red Mars which was also near the Messier 44 star cluster, aka the Beehive, all in Cancer. This was on the evening of May 3, 2025, in the deep twilight sky. Mars was passing across the north edge of the star cluster over several nights in early May 2025, but on this night the Moon was also in the scene near Mars, which was then at magnitude +1.

The two stars above and below M44 are Asellus Borealis (beside the Moon) and Asellus Australis (at bottom). The chain of stars at top right belong to Cancer and to Gemini next door.

Technical:

With such a large range of brightness between the bright sunlit side of the Moon, the faint Earthshine illuminating the night side of the Moon, and the stars of the cluster, this was a challenge to shoot and process.

This is a blend of 9 exposures, from 30 seconds for the base image of the twilight sky, Mars and stars, and 8 other exposures from 15 seconds down to 1/500 second for the lunar disk. All were blended with Lights1 luminosity masks created with the Lumenzia Photoshop extension panel, but with each mask manipulated and edited ad hoc for a smoother blend of tones and content. This is not an HDR blend.

All shot with the Askar FMA180 Astrograph at f/4.5 (180mm focal length) and Canon R5 at ISO 100. To avoid lens flares from the Moon, I had to shoot with a shorter focal length than would have been ideal (which would have been about 400mm) for framing the group. This allowed placing the Moon dead centre so lens flares were at least centered on the Moon and not glaring off to one side as ghost images. I then cropped down for a more aesthetic Rule of Thirds composition.

I added the diffraction spikes in post with AstronomyTools actions to add a "sparkle" to the stars. A final application of Nik Color EFX Classical Soft Focus and Glamour Glow filters added an overall glow to further smooth the blending and lens glows.

The Messier star cluster M38 at left, with the smaller NGC 1907 cluster below, amid a complex field of nebulosity in central Auriga, including from left to right: IC 417 (at bottom), IC 410 (lower right), and IC 405 (at upper right), aka the Flaming Star Nebula.

This is a stack of 6 x 6 minute exposures at ISO 800 with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII, and through the 92mm TMB apo refractor with the Borg 0.85x flattener/reducer for f/4.5. Mounted on the Sky-Watcher EQ6-R mount for testing.

Taken on a -10° night on January 4, 2018 from home. Guided with the Starshoot auto-guider run by PHD2 on the Macbook.

Diffraction spikes added with Noel Carboni’s Astronomy Tools actions.

I wasn’t happy with previous version, so i reedited this widefield.

2 picture mosaic (43*60sec, 50mm, f3.5, ISO3200). I love this area of Milky Way, full of light/dark nebulas, stars and starclusters.

Unmodified Pentax k-50, Skywatcher Star Adventurer tracker.

The first image of 2023, and because Orion is already setting relatively early, it made sense to revisit M42, The Orion Nebula. This shot is a composite image made from three different exposures and stacked separately. The lower exposure images were then blended with the higher exposure image to reduce the overexposed regions to just The Trapezium Cluster (the asterism of six very bright, young stars in the central region).

[Summarised From Wikipedia] The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated approximately 1,344 light-years away in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth and is estimated to be 24 light-years across.

The Orion Nebula is visible with the naked eye and is seen as the middle "star" in the "sword" of Orion, which are the three stars located south of Orion's Belt. The "star" appears fuzzy to sharp-eyed observers, and the nebulosity is obvious through binoculars or a small telescope.

Just as The Trapezium Cluster is a component of the much larger Orion Nebula, so the Orion Nebula is in turn surrounded by the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex which is hundreds of light years across, spanning the whole Orion Constellation.

17/01/2023

017 x 300-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -10°C

008 x 120-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -10°C

023 x 030-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -10°C

095 x dark frames

050 x flat frames

100 x bias frames

Binning 1x1

Total integration time = 1 hour, 52 minutes and 30 seconds

Captured with APT

Guided with PHD2

Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop

Equipment:

Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS

Mount: Skywatcher EQ5

Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini

Guiding Camera: Zwo ASI 120 MC and SVBONY SV105 with ZWO USBST4 guider adapter

Imaging Camera: Zwo ASI 1600MC Pro with anti-dew heater

Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector

Filter: Optolong L-Pro

All I did was held my point & shoot camera lens up to the eyepiece on my telescope- 77x magnification eyepiece.

(Single Image / No Photoshop)

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.

HSV Botanical Garden