Sharpless 2-12 is a very large nebula. It's full extent sprawls over a vast region and it is therefore best imaged with either a smaller focal length or a camera with a bigger sensor or both

Still this view does reveal some interesting structures. Like many Sharpless objects it doesn't seem to be imaged that often

Total integration :

Three and a half hours in Ha (10 minute subs)

2 hours and 20 minutes in RGB with a OSC

5 minute subs x 24 + one minute subs x 60)

Equipment

Sharpstar Z4

HEQ5

ZWO ASI 533 MM pro

ZWO ASI 533 MC pro

Antlia 3 nm H alpha Filter

ASIAR

Software

ASIAIR

AstropixelProcessor

PixinSight

Photoshop CS6

Processing notes-

Ha and RGBI data processed independently

Stack in AstroPixelProcessor

Graxpert for Gradient Correction in Ha

In this instance I removed light pollution and neutralised background in the RGB stack using AstroPixelProcessor before Gradient Correction in PixInsight. This seemed to provide better results than GC /ADBE or Graxpert in PI by themselves

BlurX (Correct Only)

BlurX non stellar

Starnet++

Nebula

Noise X

GHS

CurvesTransformation

Stars

Setiastro StarStretch script

Stars combined with

PixelMath

HaRGB

Ha and RGB combined using the Marco Lorenzi technique as suggested by Andy Campbell

NGC 7635, known as the Bubble Nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. A dynamic region of gas and dust in the Milky Way. The circular feature is a bubble blown in the material between the stars by the radiation and wind of energetic particles by one of the bright stars inside the bubble. Composite of multiple exposures totaling 5hr 32min. GSO RC 8" f/10 telescope, ZWO ASI2600MM monochrome cooled CMOS camera, SVBONY H-alpha 7nm filter, Losmandy GM811G mount, ZWO ASIAir Pro controller, auto-guided. Processed in Astro Pixel Processor, Lightroom, Photoshop.

Venus and Jupiter are the two brightest planets in the night sky. They are visible to the naked eye without binoculars and are easily distinguishable even for the casual observer.

Venus appeared much brighter than Jupiter during the conjunction, however, they were both clearly visible to the naked eye in the early evening sky.

Thanks to the relatively short orbit of Venus (225 days) coupled with Jupiter’s 12-year orbit, the pair reach conjunction roughly every 13 months.

In this picture Venus is above Jupiter and you can clearly see the four Galilean moons of Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. If you expand the picture to full size you will even make out some of the background stars.

Equipment Used

Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 81 APO

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at gain 101, temperature -10C

Filter: ZWO UV/IR Cut filter

Focal reducer: William Optics 0.8x 2.00"

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290MM Mini guidecam

Guide Scope: William Optics 50mm

Stacked from:

Lights 4 at 20ms, gain 101, temp -10C

Flats 30 at 150ms, gain 101, temp -10C

DarkFlats 30 at 150ms, gain 101 temp -10C

Bortle 4 sky.

Stacked in AstroPixelProcessor and adjusted in Photoshop CS4 and Topaz DeNoise AI

GSO Newton telescope 800 / f4 on EQ6-R-Pro

Camera ZWO ASI294MC pro, met OAG, filter :Optolong LPro

30 sep 2022, Gain 120, at -20°, 2 x 30 sec , 63 x 60 sec, 9 x 180 sec (+darks,bias, flats)

Total exposure: 1u 31 min

AstroPixelProcessor + Photoshop

Dirk Van Luyten – Molezon – France

A section of the Rho Ophiuchi Molecular Cloud Complex and the surrounding area is a colorful region visible in the summer sky in the constellation Ophiuchus. The blue-white star Rho Ophiuchi with its two smaller companion stars can be seen near the top center of the photo. The upper part of the photo is filled with blue reflection nebulae that are illuminated by the bright, bright blue stars in the region. The black snake like rivers are dark nebula made of dense interstellar dust clouds that completely blocks the transmission of light from the stars behind the cloud. The region is fertile with widely spread raw materials that will eventually coalesce via the forces of gravity into new stars in the distant future.

The lower right corner of photo contains a rare yellowish reflection nebula. Unlike the blue reflection nebula in the upper part of the photo, the lower reflection nebula is being illuminated by the giant red supergiant star Antares located in the neighboring constellation of Scorpius. The light from Antares is dominant in the red area of the visible spectrum and the particles of dust are reflecting the yellow wavelength of light that give the yellow nebula its yellowish hue. The blue-white stars in the upper part of the photo emit light in the blue end of the spectrum that gives the blue reflection nebulae a blueish hue.

Antares is about 588 times the diameter of the Sun and is about 12 times more massive. Antares is about 76,000 time more luminous than the Sun. It is in the red supergiant stage indicating that it is in the final stages of its lifespan that will end in about a million years as a catastrophic supernova explosion.

A spherically shaped globular cluster of stars M4 is located near the lower right center of the photo. It is located above the Milky Way Galaxy’s plane in the galactic halo. It is the closest of the 158 globular clusters that surround the galaxy at a distance about 56,000 light years from Earth. M4 contains about 400,000 white dwarf stars, which are considered to be some of the oldest stars in the Universe with an estimated average age of 12.2 billion years. The total mass of the cluster of about 67,000 solar masses.

Above M4 and to its right is a large red emission nebula composed mainly of ionized Hydrogen. The blue-white star at its center is stimulating the Hydrogen to glow red. This is a stellar nursery in which stars are currently forming.

The image was constructed with data taken remotely over the Internet from the iTelescope T8 astrograph ( www.itelescope.net/ )located at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Thirty-two 5-minute exposures were taken over 5 nights in June and July of 2020 using Astrodon wideband Luminance, Red, Green, Blue, and a narrowband Hydrogen Alpha filters. The astrograph is composed of Takahshi FSQ-ED 106 mm telescope with a photographic speed of f/5 and a focal length of 530 mm. A Finger Lakes Instruments FLI 16803 Monochrome CCD camera was attached to the telescope. I controlled T8 from my home in Northern VA via the Internet.

The raw T8 data was downloaded to my PC via the Internet for processing using the image processing programs: Astro Pixel Processor (APP) ( www.astropixelprocessor.com/ ), PixInsight (PI) ( pixinsight.com/ ), and Adobe Photoshop 2020. Most of the processing was performed with APP, after which PI and Photoshop were used to make small refinements in hue, saturation, and contrast. The final full color image was about 92 MB in size.

Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC1396), 08/18/2020

This was a fun night and an unexpected result. I took my equipment out to my favorite dark sky location to camp and capture photons. I was looking forward to showing off my hobby to my wife and some friends who were camping as well. I got my gear setup and took my first capture, but the frame was very faint and unexciting. Kind of boring. Oh well. Everything else was going well so I decided to stick with it and see. The next day I did a quick stack and process and DAMN there was a ton of detail there after all! I did not quite get the framing right but that only means I have a reason to try this one again.

I don’t know how someone saw an elephant trunk when looking at this but hey you discover it, you get to name it I guess. It is found in the constellation of Cepheus and is about 2,400 light-years from us. The “trunk” itself is over 20 light-years long. In 2003 several very young stars where discovered in the circular cavity in the tip of the trunk. The stellar wind from these hot young stars may have carved out this hole.

Equipment:

RASA 8

CGEM-dx mount

ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

ZWO Asiair Pro

Optolong L-Pro filter

Details:

Location – Buck Creek Campground, WA

Bortle Class 3

Gain 120

40 300-second Lights

60 Darks

60 Bias

60 Flats

Astro Pixel Processor

Lightroom

Photoshop

#astrophotography #astronomy #comos #nightphotography #space #telescope #deepsky #asi294mcpro #amateurastronomy #backyardastronomy #asiair #asiairpro #rasa #celestron #astropixelprocessor #optolong #telescope #astronomyphotography #deepskyobject #zwo #longexposurephotography #IC1396 #elephanttrunknebula

My second try at astrophotography. Using a Nikon D800, aa Nikkor 500mm AI-P and a Celestron CGEM EQ mount. 30 seconds expositions, blended in Astro Pixel Processor.

During my holidays in Pongratzen, Austria, I gathered data from M31. I used an Omegon 342 mm f/4.5 APO combined with a Nikon D800 dSLR. Processing was done in AstroPixelProcessor and Darktable. Total integration time is 2 hrs 14 minutes.

IC 447, a reflection nebula in the constellation Monoceros. 3hr 25min total exposure, Explore Scientific ED102 (102mm f/7), ZWO ASI2600MC cooled color camera, processed in AstroPixelProcessor and Lightroom.

Dentelle du Cygne

Canon 6D non defiltré, Tamron 150-600 G2 @600mm f/7.1 iso6400, 105x40s (70 minutes)

Star adventurer, AstropixelProcessor

Canon 1100d fullspectrum CLS CCD; Star Adventurer Canon 40mm STM; @ f5; ISO 800 - Exp: 2h40' (16*10') with autoguider; Darks & Flats & Bias

Backyardeos + APP + PS (Astronomy Tools + Tonality Mask Panel) + LR

Siena (Italy), 26/12/2018

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was discovered by astronomers using the wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility this year in early March. Since then the new long-period comet has brightened substantially and is now sweeping across the northern constellation Corona Borealis in predawn skies.

In the new year on January 12 and at perigee, its closest to our fair planet, on February 1. The brightness of comets is notoriously unpredictable, but by then C/2022 E3 (ZTF) could become only just visible to the eye in dark night skies.

Take earlier in the morning from our backyard observatory, with and RC16” and one-shot color camera QHY 268C with an overall exposure of 1 hour.

Processed with Pixinsight / AstroPixelProcessor and Photoshop. I am still working with the final image where appear the comet and stars aligned and pin-pointed, but it's hard to get our target due to the resolution equipment (0,30"/px).

I hope you enjoy the result.

First attempt at this subject.. Thinking I slightly missed focus

36-300" Lights (gain75, temp -10)

10-300" Darks

ZWO ASI2600MM, Chroma 3nm Ha/O3/S2 filters, Stellarvue 70mm scope with .8 FR on Orion Atlas Pro mount. Guiding. SGPro, PHD2, 24 x 5 min = 2 hours Ha and 12 x 5 min = 1 Hour O3 and S2 each. Pixinsight, Astropixelprocessor and Photoshop CC. Stars removed with StarXTerminator.

Short session last night only allowed an hour of integration, but still thought I'd post

Nikon d5300 (unmodded)

WO GT81

SW HEQ5-Pro

60-60" Light frames

15 Darks

IC1848 Soul Nebula.

Soul nebula IC1848, narrowband processed. The stars are forming in the soul of the Queen of Ethiopia. More specifically, in a star-forming region called Soul Nebula can be found in the constellation Cassiopeia, a constellation Greek mythology identified as the arrogant wife of a king who has long ruled the lands around the top river Nile. the Soul nebula contains several open clusters of stars, an intense radio source known as W5 and huge bubbles formed by winds from massive young stars. Located about 6,500 light-years away, the Soul Nebula spans about 100 light years.

Technical data:

Remote Observatory "FarLightTeam"

Team: Jesús M. Vargas, Bittor Zabalegui,José Esteban, Marc Valero.

Telescope: Takahashi FSQ106 ED 530mm f/5

CCDs: QSI683 wsg8

Filters: Baader Planetarium - Halpha-SII-OIII

Mount: 10Micron GM1000 HPS

Imaging Software: Voyager

Processing Software: PixInsight-AstroPixelProcessor

Imaging Data:

Captured through 12 December 2021 to 21 February 2022, ( Fregenal de la Sierra ) Badajoz, Spain.

Image composed of a Mosaic of 2 tiles:

Ha: 94x1200"

SII-OIII: 147x1200"

Darks, flats, bias

M82 or the Cigar galaxy, shines brightly at infrared wavelengths and is remarkable for its star formation activity. The Cigar galaxy experiences gravitational interactions with its neighbouring galaxy, M81, causing it to have an extraordinarily high rate of star formation — a starburst.

M82 is about 12 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is five times brighter than the whole Milky Way and one hundred times brighter than our galaxy's centre.

I took this last night over about two and a half hours using a filter to block out UV and Infrared light so it only captures visible light. I will try again soon with a different filter to see if it can bring out the star creation areas in the centre.

~~~~~

Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus 256G

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: ZWO IR Cut filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

Stacked from:

Lights 71 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flats 30 at 1.08 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flats 30 at 1.08 seconds gain 101 temp -10C

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Added captions in Photoshop CS4

IC1848 Soul Nebula.

Soul nebula IC1848, narrowband processed. The stars are forming in the soul of the Queen of Ethiopia. More specifically, in a star-forming region called Soul Nebula can be found in the constellation Cassiopeia, a constellation Greek mythology identified as the arrogant wife of a king who has long ruled the lands around the top river Nile. the Soul nebula contains several open clusters of stars, an intense radio source known as W5 and huge bubbles formed by winds from massive young stars. Located about 6,500 light-years away, the Soul Nebula spans about 100 light years.

Technical data:

Remote Observatory "FarLightTeam"

Team: Jesús M. Vargas, Bittor Zabalegui,José Esteban, Marc Valero.

Telescope: Takahashi FSQ106 ED 530mm f/5

CCDs: QSI683 wsg8

Filters: Baader Planetarium - Halpha-SII-OIII

Mount: 10Micron GM1000 HPS

Imaging Software: Voyager

Processing Software: PixInsight-AstroPixelProcessor

Imaging Data:

Captured through 12 December 2021 to 21 February 2022, ( Fregenal de la Sierra ) Badajoz, Spain.

Image composed of a Mosaic of 2 tiles:

Ha: 94x1200"

SII-OIII: 147x1200"

Darks, flats, bias

Date: Jul. 29 - Aug. 01, 2023(GMT)

Location: Hurtado Valley, Chile

Optics: Takahashi TOA150B

Camera: ASI6200MM Pro (-10C)

Filter: Chroma SHO 3nm

Gain: 300

Exposure:

　- Panel1 (Northern Part)

　　S-ii 52x300sec.

　　Ha 59x300sec.

　　O-iii 54x300sec.

　- Panel2 (Southern Part)

　　S-ii 51x300sec.

　　Ha 54x300sec.

　　O-iii 51x300sec.

Processing: PixInsight, AstroPixelProcessor

First attempt with ASI2600MC

A lot still to learn on the processing/editing

Shot through William Optics GT81 with .8x flattener, so definitely quite a bit of crop

HEQ5 Pro Mount guided

38 Lights- 300sec,Gain 50, sensor -10

10 Darks

Processed with APP, Gimp, PS Elements

The great globular cluster in Herculer, Messier 13 (M13.

The Horsehead nebula in Hydrogen-alpha

Astrophotography is a complex process combing optics, precise mechanical pointing & tracking, real-time guiding corrections, field derotation, environmental, and sequencing through multiple pieces of equipment that all need to “talk” to each other to automate the 66 exposure frames that were obtained here. Small corrections in focus need to be made as temperatures change, small errors in tracking are corrected using a second telescope and camera that counters the mechanical equipment limitations to keep it at level of seeing that the atmosphere allows.; periodic small adjustments in tracking, called dithering, are made to average out sensor issues that could later be mistaken for signal, then finally calibration frames are taken using a special light panel of perfectly uniform illumination…this is all done remotely and robotically controlled by a computer mounted with the scope communicating with my computer at home. My telescope could be in my backyard or halfway across the world.

After collecting the data frames called “light frames” those 66 44MB images are added together in a process called stacking. This registers, normalizes, calibrates, aligns and adds the data signal while keeping the noise as low as possible, it also normalizes gradients and artifacts due to the optics as well as light pollution. …the final preprocessed image is essentially a uniform blank gray single image about 250GB in size with no stars or nebula visible!

The post processing next takes this image and pulls or stretches the signal from the background noise (dark sky sensor dark current) makes two images: one with the stars removed and one with the stars. Those two are processed separately using different techniques to enhance the extremely dim nebula signal from the noise. Then eliminate more noise and enhance sharpness of the fine details. Finally the two Star field and nebula images are recombined in the single image you see.

Just three decades ago équipement and processing of this level were only available in professional research grade equipment costing millions of dollars. Of late, advances in signal processing software, consumer available astronomy camera grade sensors and computing power have allowed amateur astronomers to rival the best science images of only a decade before. And the cost and relative ease of entry to excellent astrophotography just over the last couple of years has decreased immensely allowing even novice astronomers with zero knowledge to press a couple power buttons and the scope, mount and software can automagically produce images that are really pretty good…all controlled on your telephone!!!

My setup is fully robotic and fully remote controlled of high end equipment designed for wide-field targets that are large and extremely dim deep space objects like nebula, star clusters and nearby galaxy clusters. As you may be able to tell it is a complex system of different equipment and software that all must to talk to each other perfectly throughout an evening(s) of imaging. So while the equipment does it thing outside in the cold or buggy heat, I can be cozy, warm and bug free away at home or sleeping. I even get warning alarms if something goes wrong (weather, clouds, dawn light or numerous other equipment issues) so if not automatically corrected that I can correct it remotely or physically need to check on the equipment. However failures are rare. While this project only involved less than a terabyte of data, some projects can collect 4+TB of data which must be off loaded remotely from the scope side SSD drives to a remote raid server.

Equipment

Telescope: WO FLT91 @540mm & f/5.9

Fattener: WO 68III (no reduction);

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro (monochromatic cooled APS-C CMOS sensor @-10°C, 100gain, 1x1bin);

Filters: Chroma Hα @ 36mm & 5nm band;

Mount: TTS160 Panther Alt-Az

Field derotation: TTS rOTAtor

Guide scope: WO RC51

Guide camera: ZWO ASI290MM

Control Computer: PLL Eagle4

Focus: PLL SS2 robotic focuser

Environment: PLL ECCO-2

Dew control: Kendrick heater straps

Flat panel: Elumiglow custom made

Image processing Computer: MacBook Pro M1

Data storage: Samsung2x 2TB SSD scope side & local OWC Mercury 4x6TB Raid

Remote Power: custom made: with LiTime 100Ah LiFePO battery, Victron Blue remote shunt, inverter, and power supply/charger

Sequencing and Processing

Remote client communications: Parallels Client

Planetarium: Cartes du Ciel & SSPro 6

Sequencing. framing & imaging: N.I.N.A.

Guiding: PHD2

Plate-solving: ASTAP

Alignment & pointing & power up: TTS custom

Communications platform: ASCOM

Focus control: NINA

Environment control: NINA

Calibration frames: NINA

Stacking & Preprocessing: APP - AstroPixelProcessor

Post processing: Pixinsight & Affinity Photo2

Image Frames

Integration time: 1hr 6min (66x60sec) Hα

Calibrations: flats and bias only

Pallet: H-alpha only

This was a fairly simple project as it involved only one Hα filter over a single evening of imaging with relatively short 60 second exposures. I can image more data with different filters and add that to the original data at a later time…

Color images however can take multiple evenings, weeks or years to collect hundreds of 3-5 minute HOS narrowband filter (Hydrogen-alpha, oxygen-III, and Sulfur-II) exposures as well as wideband short exposures of LRGB (luminence, red, blue, and green wide band pass filters) using 6 different filters for the camera. Total integration times (total exposure time) can easily be 40+hours involving thousands of light and calibration frames and multiple terabytes of data. The processing of the final image can take hours to days. So why not just use a color camera (called an “OSC” one shot color) instead of a monochrome sensor? Easy: monochrome sensors are superior and much more sensitive than OSC color cameras that must use a Bayer filter and collect only ¼ of the photons per pixel that a monochrome sensor can over the same amount of exposure time. Color cameras introduce more noise in the signal and further complicate the tracking/guiding errors due to the need for longer exposures. Plus color cameras just plain suck with color calibration and getting star colors those jeweled and bright objects that they are from the blue giants to the deep red carbon stars to all the colors in between. Also false color images are very easy to compose with a monochrome sensor!

Hope you enjoy the beauty of the invisible evening sky as much as I enjoy revealing it!!

La famosa galassia Vortice (Whirlpool) M51 che si trova nella Costellazione dei Cani da Caccia, a 31 milioni di anni luce dal sistema solare sembra toccarsi con la sua compagna in basso NGC-5195.

Setup SkyWatcher Heq5 goto, rifrattore Svbony SV503 102ed, camera Qhy183, impostata a -5 gradi, gain 11 offsett 30 filtro Svbony CLS, camera guida Asi 120mm teleguida 60/240.

Tot. Integrazione ore 16:00 risultato della somma di 240Light da 240” più Dark, Flat e DarkFlat.

Software di acquisizione Ekos tramite dispositivo raspberry e OS StellarMate.

Software somma e elaborazione, AstroPixelProcessor, Pixinsight.

Bortle 7.2.

Cieli Sereni

NGC 6946 is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. Its distance from Earth is about 25.2 million light-years

It gets its name, Fireworks Galaxy because of the number of Supernova explosions that have been reported in the galaxy. In the last century alone, at least 10 supernovae have been detected in the galaxy. N.A.S.A.

It is also known as a Starburst Galaxy galaxy due to the number of new stars being created.

I have taken images of this galaxy before, but this time I have worked on sharpening up the collimation, adjusted the back-focus and opened up the image train (by replacing the 50mm M42 spacer with an M48 spacer) to reduce vignetting. This has not just helped the image camera it has also improved the view for the guide camera, resulting in better tracking.

~~~~~

Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus 256G

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: Optolong L-Pro filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

Stacked from:

Lights 85 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flats 30 at 1.1 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flats 30 at 1.1 seconds gain 101 temp -10C

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Added captions in Photoshop CS4

Heart Nebula (IC 1805), 08/27/2020

Last weekend I headed back out to the Buck Creek campground, this time by myself. The weather was clear and the moon was not yet full and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I was able to setup my big telescope and two separate cameras to capture images. I’ll post the other pictures soon. It was a successful trip all around.

This is the Heart Nebula and it is huge. If the Heart Nebula was as easy to see as the Moon, it would be almost ten times the size in the night sky. It is found in the constellation of Cassiopeia and is some 7500 light-years away. The lower portion of the Heart Nebula has its own designation NGC 896 and is called the Fish head Nebula. It seems to me that these two nebulae where easy to name.

Equipment:

RASA 8

CGEM-dx mount

ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

ZWO Asiair Pro

Optolong L-Pro filter

Details:

Location – Buck Creek Campground, WA

Bortle Class 3

Gain 120

56 300-second Lights (4.67 hours)

60 Darks

60 Bias

60 Flats

Astro Pixel Processor

Lightroom

Photoshop

#astrophotography #astronomy #comos #nightphotography #space #telescope #deepsky #asi294mcpro #amateurastronomy #backyardastronomy #asiair #asiairpro #celestronrasa #celestron #astropixelprocessor #optolong #telescope #astronomyphotography #deepskyobject #zwo #longexposurephotography #ic1805 #heartnebula

New version of IC1848 with new material. The cooled monochrome camera increases the image quality considerably.

Spec :

- Skywatcher HEQ5 pro

- William optics zenithstar61 II

- Flat 61A

- Willam optics UniGuide32

- ZWO AsiAir pro

- ZWO asi120mc

- ZWO asi294mm

- ZWO Electronic Filter Wheel 8x31mm

- ZWO Electronic Automatic Focuser

- ZWO Y spliter

- SHO-LRGB 6nm c-mos optomised

- Kendircks dewheater 4"

- Kendricks dewheater 1.25"

Ha : 68 × 300"

Sii : 52 × 300"

Oiii : 41 × 300"

R : 10 x 60"

G : 10 x 60"

B : 10 x 60"

(13h20 total integration)

Darks : 30

Flats : 30

Temp : -10C°

Gain : 120

Bortel 6

Brookline, QC, Canada

SHO-RGB Process

AstroPixelProcessor / PixInsight

A blast from the past, the very distant past. 2025kfm is a supernova in the very distant galaxy IC 4408. It took 440 million years for the light from the incredibly bright exploding star to reach us, some of which was captured through my little telescope.

10 5 minute exposures

Explore Scientific ED102 102mm f/7 apochromat refractor, Explore Scientific 1x flattener

ZWO ASI2600MC Pro cooled color CMOS camera, IDAS DTD light pollution filter

ZWO EAF autofocuser

iOptron CEM25P mount

ZWO ASIAir Pro controller

auto-guided, SVBONY SV2165 30mm f/4 guide scope, ZWO ASI120MM Mini guide camera

Processed in Astro Pixel Processor, Lightroom, Photoshop

#astrophotography #supernova #deepskyphotography

My second try at astrophotography. Using a Nikon D800, aa Nikkor 500mm AI-P and a Celestron CGEM EQ mount. 30 seconds expositions, blended in Astro Pixel Processor.

M51 photographed from my garden in Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. Estimated SQM ±16. Approximately 4 hrs of data taken with an Explore Scientific 102ED apochromatic telescope, connected to a Nikon D600 (unmodified) dSLR. Post processing in Astropixelprocessor.

Eagle Nebula (M16), 07/09/2020

We had a new moon and clear skies at the same time last weekend so there was no way I was passing up that opportunity. I hooked up the RV, kissed my wife goodbye, and headed to the hills to catch some photons! Things mostly went well, mostly. As I started to setup my gear at dusk, I realized I had forgotten a critical usb cable. This meant I needed to huck all the expensive equipment into the RV and run into town. This was a two-hour round trip to Wally World and back. Then re-setup the telescope and let it run into the wee hours of the night.

This is the Eagle Nebula, an object I have shot several times before, but this time I used a fancy light pollution filter. This filter makes it possible to process the data in a simulated Hubble Telescope color palette. Short explanation is that the filter separates the hydrogen-alpha (red) and the oxygen-III (blue) light-wavelengths into separate color channels during image processing.

The Eagle Nebula is a 5.5-million-year-old cloud of molecular hydrogen gas and dust stretching approximately 70 light years by 55 light years. It lies about 6,500 light-years away. The “Eagle” itself in the center is the famous Hubble image, “The Pillars of Creation”.

Equipment:

RASA 8

iOptron GEM45

ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

ZWO Asiair Pro

Optolong L-eHhance filter

Details:

Location – Buck Creek Campground

Bortle Class 3

Gain 120

65 120-second Lights

60 Darks

60 Bias

60 Flats

Astro Pixel Processor

StarNet++

Lightroom

Photoshop

#astrophotography #astronomy #comos #nightphotography #space #telescope #deepsky #asi294mcpro #amateurastronomy #backyardastronomy #asiair #asiairpro #rasa #celestron #ioptrongem45 #astropixelprocessor #optolong #deepskyobject #zwo #longexposurephotography #astronomyphotography #M16 #eaglelnebula #pillarsofcreation

Canon 1100D Fullspectrum CLS CCD Tecnosky 70/420 ED 1X; Skywatcher AZEQ5

ISO 1600 - Exp: 6h6' (61x6') ASI120MC guide; Darks & Flats & Bias

APP + PS (Astronomy Tools; Tonalitymasks) + LR

Siena, 14/06/2018

Uranus is the seventh planet in distance from the Sun and the least massive of the solar system’s four giant, or Jovian, planets, which also include Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.

Its moons are named after characters created by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. These include Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, Ariel and Miranda. All are frozen worlds with dark surfaces. Some are ice and rock mixtures. The most interesting Uranian moon is Miranda; it has ice canyons, terraces, and other strange-looking surface areas.

The bright star to the right is Omicron Arietis in Aries.

Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Pro

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: ZWO UV IR Cut filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

Stacked from:

Lights 1 at 30 seconds, gain 100, temp -10C

Darks 20 at 30 seconds, gain 100, temp -10C

Flat 30 at 80.0ms, gain 100, temp -10C

Dark Flat 30 at 80.0ms, gain 100, temp -10C

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor and adjusted in Photoshop CS4.

500 images of 30 seconds stacked in AstroPixelProcessor shoot with a Fuji X-T30 and the Samyang 135mm f/2 at ISO 800

Eagle nebula M16 NGC 6611 Omega nebula M17 NGC 6618; 12 x 300s; ISO 200. Farm Kiripotib, Namibia

© Julian Köpke

NGC 6888 nébuleuse du Croissant , Sony A7s 140x30s, 30 flats, 40 darks, 25 offsets, traitement AstroPixelProcessor, Pixinsight, et Photoshop CC, grosse galère car mon A7S souffre de "Banding" et très dur à atténuer.

IC 1848, known as the Soul Nebula (companion to the Heart Nebula).

November 4-5, 2021. 2x2 mosaic, each roughly 2 hours of total exposure. Explore Scientific FCD-100 102mm telescope, ASI294MC camera, dual narrow-band filter (H-alpha, [O III]), iOptron CEM25P mount, ASIAir controller, processed in Astro Pixel Processor and Lightroom.

Abell 1367 Galaxy Cluster, stitched together in Astropixelprocessor.

St-avg-0.0s-SC_1_2.0_none-x_1.0_LZ3-NS-full-eq-add-sc_BWMV_nor-AA-RL-MBB11_1stLNC_it2_scale curves denoise clone_bin2

The Sombrero Galaxy (M104), 04/18/2021

Like I said in my last photo, its galaxy season, lol. A few weeks ago, I took my gear up into the woods and was able to capture lots of images while in the dark skis. I have always wanted to photography this galaxy, but it is really small and far away (31 million light-year), but I did it anyways. This picture is cropped in a lot. The Sombrero Galaxy is almost perfectly edge on to our field of view, so the dust lanes really pop. It also contains one of the biggest super-massive black holes ever discovered.

Equipment:

RASA 8

iOptron GEM45

ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

ZWO Asiair

Optolong L-Pro filter

Details:

Location – Long Mire Campground

Bortle Class 2

167 30-second Lights (1.4 hrs.)

60 Darks

60 Dark flats

60 Flats

Astro Pixel Processor

Lightroom

Photoshop

#astrophotography #astronomy #comos #nightphotography #space #telescope #deepsky #asi294mcpro #amateurastronomy #backyardastronomy #asiair #asiairpro #celestronrasa #celestron #ioptron #ioptrongem45 #astropixelprocessor #optolong #telescope #astronomyphotography #deepskyobject #zwo #longexposurephotography #M104 #sombrerogalaxy

Nikon D5300 (unmodded)

WO GT81

SW HEQ-5Pro (unguided)

137 lights - 120sec

20 Darks

M81 è una bella galassia a spirale situata nella costellazione dell'Orsa Maggiore. Si tratta dell'oggetto n.81 del famoso catalogo Messier, ma è anche conosciuta come galassia di Bode.

Distanza dalla terra, 11.740.000 anni luce.

Setup SkyWatcher Heq5 goto, rifrattore Svbony SV503 102ed, camera Qhy183, impostata a -5 gradi, gain 11 offsett 30 filtro Svbony CLS, camera guida Asi 224mc teleguida 60/240.

Tot. Integrazione ore 16:00 risultato della somma di 192 Light da 300” più Dark, Flat e DarkFlat.

Software di acquisizione Ekos tramite dispositivo raspberry e OS StellarMate.

Software somma e elaborazione, AstroPixelProcessor e Pixinsight.

Bortle 7.2.

Cieli Sereni

Technical data:

Remote Observatory "FarLightTeam"

Team: Marc Valero, José Esteban, Jesús M. Vargas, Bittor Zabalegui.

Telescope: Takahashi FSQ106 ED 530mm f/5

CCDs: QSI683 wsg8

Filters: Baader Planetarium - LRGB

Mount: 10Micron GM1000 HPS

Imaging Software: Voyager

Processing Software: PixInsight-AstroPixelProcessor

Imaging Data:

Captured Between February 1 to April 30, 2022 in 6 sessions due to bad weather.

( Fregenal de la Sierra ) Badajoz, Spain.

Hosting "E-EYE Entre Encinas y Estrellas"

Image composed of:

Luminance 54 x 900" .....13,5 hours

RGB 28x300" on each channel ..... 7 hours

Total ....20,5 hours

Darks, flats, bias

Processed by: Jesús M. Vargas

Technical explanation of objects :

The Virgo cluster is a cluster of galaxies located approximately 59 ± 4 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo. It contains some 1,300 known galaxies, although there may be as many as 2,000, and forms the central region of the Local Supercluster, in which the Local Group is also found. Its mass is estimated to be 1.2×1015 MS up to about 8 degrees from the center of the cluster, which is equivalent to a radius of about 2.2 Mpc.3

Many of the bright galaxies in this cluster, including the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, were discovered in the late 1770s and early 1780s and later included in Charles Messier's catalogue. Described by Messier as starless nebulae, their true nature would not be discovered until the 1920s.

The cluster subtends a maximum arc of about 8 degrees centered on the constellation Virgo, and many of its galaxies can be seen with an amateur telescope. Its brightest member is the giant elliptical galaxy M49, but the most notable and famous is the galaxy M87, located in its center.

In the center of the image we show we have NGC 4435 and NGC 4438, also known as the Eye Galaxies or Arp 120, they are two galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, about 52 million light years from our galaxy, also visible with amateur telescopes.

NGC 4435:

NGC 4435 is a barred lenticular galaxy showing a ring of dust around the nucleus. Through studies carried out with the Spitzer telescope, a young stellar population has been detected in its center, which indicates that 190 million years ago it suffered a stellar outbreak perhaps caused by an interaction with NGC 4438, and almost all of its hot gas, according to studies. made in X-rays with the Chandra telescope, is concentrated in its central region. It also seems to have a long tail that was also thought to be produced by this event, but which is actually a system of dust clouds in our galaxy that is totally unrelated to NGC 4435.

NGC 4438:

NGC 4438 is a hard-to-classify galaxy that has been classified as both a spiral galaxy and a lenticular galaxy, which explains its inclusion in Halton C. Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. It is one of the most notable galaxies in the cluster due to its highly distorted appearance, which shows that it is undergoing or has undergone gravitational interactions, and for the unknown mechanism that causes its central region to show activity, and that it has expelled opposing gas loops at one the other. A starburst, a black hole, or an active galactic nucleus has been thought of, and all possibilities are under investigation. It also shows a low content of neutral hydrogen, perhaps due to its friction with the hot gas that fills the intergalactic medium of Virgo or with the corona of hot gas that surrounds the nearby galaxy M86 and/or due to having been torn away by gravitational attraction. of some galaxy with which it was about to collide (perhaps M86 itself), in addition to a displacement of the different components of its interstellar medium (neutral hydrogen, molecular hydrogen, hot gas, and interstellar dust, which reaches up to a distance of 4-5 kiloparsecs from its disk) in the direction of NGC 4435 -which tends to be attributed, however, to friction with the aforementioned intergalactic medium-, and finally traces of having undergone several bursts of star formation.

A pair of interacting galaxies?

NGC 4435 and NGC 4438 have been and are considered by numerous authors to be a pair of interacting galaxies, having calculated that the two galaxies came close 100 million years ago to just 16,000 light years from each other. In any case, and despite the strong evidence in favor of an interaction between the two, other scientists have expressed doubts as to whether the two galaxies are actually interacting despite their apparent proximity, since their redshifts are different and NGC 4435 is barely visible. has suffered the effects of such interaction. It has also been speculated that NGC 4438 may actually be two galaxies merging, having nothing to do with NGC 4435, which has interacted in the past with M86 (to which it seems to be joined by filaments of gas and in which it is detected certain amount of interstellar dust and atomic and ionized hydrogen that seems to come from NGC 4438, which reinforces this possibility) causing the peculiarities observed in it, that the three mentioned galaxies have interacted with each other, and even that NGC 4438 may be being torn apart by the gravity (tidal forces) of M87, which is only 58 arcminutes away from it (and seems to have gotten as close as 300 kiloparsecs).

About 40 million years ago in a galaxy far, far away a White Dwarf and its binary companion fought their own Star War. The result was a spectacular supernova in that galaxy which outshone even the galactic core. It will have been a spectacular event for all of the citizens of the star systems in that galaxy.

This month, the light from this explosion eventually reached here, being first seen by citizens of good old planet Earth on 14 July 2025. And ten days later by me and my C11.

You can see the supernova in my photo. It is the bright spot to the right of the core of the galaxy. You can zoom in on the picture to see the detail for yourself.

For a more technical description:

The Deer Lick galaxy, NGC 7331, is an unbarred spiral galaxy located 39.8 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.

On 14 July 2025, a supernova, named SN 2025rbs, was discovered in this galaxy. It is a type Ia supernova: which typically takes place in binary star systems, in which one of the components is a white dwarf. The white dwarf receives a flux of matter from a more massive companion star, creating an accretion disk which collapses and eventually ends up in a supernova explosion.

Shorter exposures (3 seconds and 20 seconds) did not capture the detail of the galaxy. With longer exposures (120 seconds) the glow of the galaxy burned out the supernova. I compromised with 30-second frames).

The sky clouded over after about 20 minutes so the result is not as good as the picture I got of NGC7331 last year.

~

Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: ZWO UV/IR cut filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

Stacked from:

Lights 35 at 30 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 30 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flat 30 at 560 ms, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flat 30 at 560 ms, gain 101 temp -10C

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Cropped and captions added in Photoshop CS4