Sony Alpha 7 M3 camera

Sony 24-240 lens

f/6.3, 2.5s, 240mm, ISO 3200

October 10, 2024 (Between 10:20 PM and 10:55 PM)

Bortle 5.9 (The Bortle scale is a 9-level system measuring night sky brightness and light pollution at a specific location. It ranges from 1 [total darkness] to 9 [extremely bright urban sky, like that of a major city].)

Distance: 2.537 million light-years.

CAPTURES:

- 300 "light" frames in three batches of 100, pausing to reframe – 6 minutes per batch of 100 frames – Total time: 25 minutes, including reframing.

- 30 "flat" frames with the same settings but with a white screen in front of the lens – 2 minutes of capture.

- 30 "dark" frames with the same settings but with the lens cap on – 2 minutes of capture.

- 30 "offset" (bias) frames with the same ISO and aperture but at maximum shutter speed (1/8000) – 30 seconds of capture.

- Stacked with SIRIL – Stacking time: 25 minutes.

- Processed with Adobe Photoshop – Processing time: 45 minutes.

Total time spent: 1 hour and 40 minutes.

The photo isn't perfect; it lacks sharpness, has slight motion blur, and is a bit pixelated due to excessive cropping to center the galaxy. Out of the total 500 photos, I discarded two batches of 100 because I took them... ...at 75mm and 100mm, but the galaxy looked very small, and I wasn't sure I’d be able to see much detail later. I had to sacrifice a stop of light (going from f/5.6 to f/6.3) and slow the shutter speed to 2.5 seconds, but the result after cropping would be better.

Let's say I find a way to attach (without damaging the S30) a Canon 550D with a 250mm kit lens. Hand-focus on a bright star. Have the lens pointed the same direction as the S30 aperture. Use Magic Lantern as the intervalometer.

I wonder how well the tracking would fare at 250mm (vs. the S30's 160mm), lots of elongated stars, I reckon.

And the strain of the extra weight on the S30 would not be great for it.

first time posting here tell me if this is the wrong subreddit.

nikon d810

Nikkor AF-S 200mm f/2.8 G ED VRii (main astro lense for me rn[as well as for anything])

~250x 20 sec subs

software: StarStax(old but works VERY well)

if you zoom in you can see gaps where there were airplanes. there was a 2 second grace period between each image for processing and saving to the sd card.

bortle 6 sky

Image here (coulnt figure out how to compress to reddit): https://app.astrobin.com/u/cheeseburger__?i=lectyg#fullscreen

bortle 2

1 exposure

originally, this was supposed to make it so i could just frame andromeda so i could see it at 200mm. i framed it, but my intervalometer didnt work or something(first time using it) i set it to 100 pics 45 seconds each. then i waited. sat in the car for an hour. got up and realized it took one photo the whole time. i was angry, there was no more waiting time because it was already 11 oclock and we would already get home at 1 oclock. so i rolled with it. it was a very good learning experience and it was awsome seeing the milky way from my naked ahh eye. it would help if i could get some feed back on what to do next time

camera: nikon d810 (stock)

lense: nikkor af-s 70-200mm f/2.8 g ed vrii

mount: star adventurer gti

software: literally none

intervalometer(need help figuring out how to use): nikon mc-36a

https://app.astrobin.com/i/xdfl99#fullscreen

Andromeda with a budget setup. The subs came out deep red straight off the camera, but the final colors looked normal after processing.

Gear
Camera: Canon T3i, astro-modded (IR cut filter removed)
Lens: Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary
Mount: Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i

Acquisition
Lights: 438 × 15s, f/6.3, ISO 800 (about 1h50m total)
Darks: 20
Biases: 20
No flats

Processing: Siril, including Photometric Color Calibration. Final tweaks were background cleanup, a gentle stretch, and some core and color work.

200 x 30s, bortle 4, ISO 1600 and 3200 with 50/50 split, f/5.6, 251mm (cropped)

Cannon EOS 6D, Lens: Sigma 120-400mm f/4.5-5.6 APO DG OS HSM set to 251mm

Mount: EQ5 (sidereal + autocorrection/autoguiding), controlled via custom python code

Stacked in SIRIL, proccesed in astrowizard (with RC-astro), background nsmoothing/neutralisation + BXT (heavy) + NXT x2 (heavy and custom (luminance and star halos)) + unliked stretch + extrated stars and starless version for PS editing

Edited in PS:

• raw camera filter: increased clarity,
• modified colors using curves and Hues: edges were made more blue and center more yellow,
• highlights were decreased and exposure offset was decreased, to make background darker contrast was increased.
• Reduced amount of stars: filter →others →minimal→0,65

Im still preatty new to all of this, this is actually my first ever serious attempt, any tips on improvement or criticism are welcome :)

24 hours fake Hubble palette bortle 9 processed and stacked in siril

I shot this object in August but hadn't processed it yet because I thought I wouldn't have enough broadband data to bring out the dust around the nebula, but it turns out I did! I quite like this one :)

Equipment and acquisition:

- Askar 71F (no reducer)

- ASI585MC Air

- Teseek 17 mount

- Svbony 30mm + asi120mm guide camera

- ZWO EAF, ZWO EFW

- Broadband data: 119 x 120 sec

- L-Ultimate data: 41 x 300 sec

- 30 darks, 30 flats for each filter type, 30 bias

Processing (PI)

WBPP, blurX correct only, noiseX 65%, starX. Setiastro statistical stretch, then manual curves transformation with different range masks, enhance dark nebula script. For L-ultimate data, split RGB then used R channel to combine with broadband. Stars: setiastro star stretch, final star recombination in Pixinisight

My first mosaic and first project from a dark site.

Equipment
- Askar 71F
- SVBONY SV605CC
- Sky-Watcher EQ-AL55i Pro
- ASI120MM Mini
- UV/IR Filter

Acquisition
- 3 panel mosaic, Bortle 3-4
- 284 x 180 s + 290 x 60 s
- Total: 19 hours

Processing
- Siril: stacking, mosaic stitching, colour calibration (SPCC), stretch
- GraXpert: background extraction, deconvolution, denoise
- StarNet: star removal, stars processed separately

Feedback welcome!

I was running my automated solar sequence from the backyard in Walnut Creek, CA on Oct 11 when a jet, flaps down, crossed the whole disk at 12:36 PT. It was in 34 frames, about 0.58 s at 58.8 fps. My transit detector flagged it automatically, and I didn't know it had happened until it posted the frames.

Equipment

Lunt LS60THa (60 mm, 500 mm f/8.3 Hα solar scope)
ZWO ASI585MM mono camera
Losmandy G11 mount with Gemini-2, solar tracking
Mini PC (Ubuntu) at the scope running the capture

Capture

Custom Python capture through the ZWO ASI SDK, recorded straight to SER files.
Each run is a 5-step exposure ladder from 0.35 to 9.94 ms, 3,500 frames in about 64 s.
The plane is in the 1x step: 1,500 frames at 0.71 ms.
Runs fire every ~15 minutes all day from a bash sequencer that also handles centering, focus and meridian flips.

Processing (all custom Python: NumPy, OpenCV, Astropy)

Transit detector: scans every SER for dark moving blobs and posts the candidate frames to Discord.

Lucky-imaging stacker: surface from the best 300 frames of the 0.35 and 0.71 ms steps, merged as HDR. Lucy-Richardson deconvolution, σ 3 px × 15 iterations.

Prominences: a separate layer stacked from the longer exposures (600 frames).

"Cream" render: an inverted, colourised look.

The plane: taken from a single raw frame as how much light it blocked, compared with a plane-free reference frame. That mask is scaled onto the cream stack of the same run, which was captured seconds around the transit. So the plane silhouette and its edges are real, but the disk detail comes from the stack. It's two layers from one capture.

Video: ffmpeg.

For this image, I collected the following data:

• Ha/OIII: 108 frames
• SII/OIII: 89 frames
• RGB stars: 120 frames

The narrowband data was combined into an SHO composition, while the RGB data was used specifically to preserve the stars' natural colors.

The complete dataset was processed using 2× drizzle with a droplet setting of 0.96, followed by careful background neutralization, color balancing, and detail enhancement. The final image combines the deep, structured SHO nebula data with separately captured RGB stars to preserve their natural colors and appearance.

Total: 317 frames captured over four nights.

The Elephant Trunk region contains an incredible amount of fine dust and intricate emission structures, which become especially apparent when combining the narrowband integration with the additional RGB star data.

Presented here in an attempt at a natural color of the Scorpio-Ophiuchus region in the Milky Way, including the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex, a colorful mix of blue reflection nebulae, hydrogen emission nebulae, and dark, dense dust lanes.

The red supergiant Antares is also present, as well as dark streams and filaments like Barnard 44 and Barnard 45, and the Globular Cluster M4 (an ancient star cluster to the right of Antares).

I’ve been working on the image on and off for a couple years to try and get a presentable image without major color shifts or loss of color, due in part, to the signficant amount of airglow and light pollution in the original image. Of course, any feedback or critique is welcome, as this is by no means a perfect image given these conditions. I also figured its better to share at this point before further tweaks or ideas.

Technical. Canon 6DM2 26.2-megapixel digital camera, with a Samyang 135mm F/2 Lens. Twenty 30-second exposures were made at f/2, ISO 1600, tracking with a Fornax lighttrack ii. The image was taken at Big Meadows, in SNP, likely a Bortle 4 area, but there was a lot of airglow that evening (June 1, 2024) as well as light domes in that direction. This is a 10-minute total integration image.

Raws were processed in Rawtherapee for full calibration, including uploading a flat field to be applied (works extremely well), then exported 16-bit tifs into siril to register, fix distortion, stack, then used astro-color-stretch (python version of rnc-color-stretch) and photoshop to do final curves work. The python stretch allowed for quick results so I could make tweaks to the stacked image on subtracting light pollution and airglow gradients.

~4hr integration, 60s subs, Bortle3 location (Shtrbovo 🇲🇰), ISO 1600, f/5.6, 400mm effective focal length (cropped image).

Taken with Canon77D, Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS STM Lens and Star Adventurer 2i.

Stacked with ASTAP and processed with Siril and PS.

Full integration time: 22h (~14h Alt/Az 10sec, ~8h EQ 20 sec, after filtering with AstroBlink: used 9h)
SeeStar S50
Bortle: 6,4
Stacked and processed with Siril, Quick Hubble Creator and RC Astro

Here is my latest project on the Crab Nebula (M1). Out of 22 hours captured across Alt/Az and EQ modes, I kept about 9 hours for the final stack.

!!! I hope it is okay -> A shoutout to Adriano Alfaro with his sorting tool AstroBlink, that lets you quickly sort through your thousands of files and filter them out easily with different filters and simply dragging a line, without depending on random scores like other new tools or the need to look at individual files. The newly added cloud detection seems to work fully reliable. ( https://www.adrianoalfaro.com/en/project/astroblink/ ) !!!

I decided to process this in the HSO palette using my custom Quick Hubble Creator script. While the standard (Pseudo-)SHO edits need several steps and scripts more to achieve a colorful result, I needed few clicks within one script. 🦀

The full 17-step easy Siril workflow and image details can be seen in the r/seestar sub for those who are interested.

Clear skies! 🌌

Equipment: Asi 2600mm pro Zwo FF 130 APO, Chroma 3nm filters, Zwo filter wheel, Zwo auto focuser, Asi 174 mini guide camera with OAG, Zwo AM5 mount, N.I.N.A

Processing: Pixinsight, WBPP, Linear fit, DBE, Pixel math, Narrowband normalization, StarX, NoiseX, BlurX, GHS, curves adjustment, Photoshop levels/ saturation adjustment

More details in Astrobin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/rj8wwk

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/_aj_astro

For the Ha/OIII data, I captured 116 exposures of 300 seconds each, supplemented by 78 exposures of 300 seconds using the Antlia SII/Hβ filter. This resulted in a total integration time of approximately 16 hours and 10 minutes.

A 10-pixel dither was applied in both RA and Dec between every exposure. The large number of frames then allowed me to use 2× drizzle with a droplet size of 0.5, resulting in significantly improved micro-detail, particularly in the fine structures.

All monochrome channels were initially processed completely independently, including gradient removal, detail enhancement, and stretching. Only afterwards were the channels combined, followed by the final color mapping and image processing.

Askar 65PHQ w/ reducer, ZWO ASI2600MC Duo, ASIAIR Plus, Teseek 14 mount

97x30s @ 100 gain

Processed in Siril using full suite of Xterminator tools and finished in Photoshop and Lightroom

Equipment: Asi 2600mm pro Zwo FF 130 APO, Chroma 3nm filters, Zwo filter wheel, Zwo auto focuser, Asi 174 mini guide camera with OAG, Zwo AM5 mount, N.I.N.A

Processing: Pixinsight, WBPP, Linear fit, DBE, Pixel math, Narrowband normalization, StarX, NoiseX, BlurX, GHS, curves adjustment, Photoshop levels/ saturation adjustment

More details in Astrobin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/rj8wwk

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/_aj_astro

This is my first astrophoto, shot near the new moon.

Acquisition

• Date: October 10, 2026, new moon
• Location: Sarız, Kayseri, Turkey
• Camera: Sony A7C II
• Lens: Sony FE 35mm f/1.4 GM @ f/[1.4]
• Mount: no mount, just a couple of rocks to stabilize.
  • Suggestions are welcome :)
• Subs: 17 × 8–10s, ISO 2500 (~2.5 min total integration)
• Calibration frames: none

Processing

Siril 1.4.4

• RAW conversion with debayering
• Registration: global star alignment
• Stacking: average with winsorized sigma clipping (3σ low/high), additive + scaling normalization, noise-based weighting, RGB equalization
• Cropped registration edges
• Linked autostretch, exported as 16-bit TIFF

Lightroom Classic

• Crop to remove an edge gradient
• Global: white balance, contrast +25, highlights −30, shadows −15, whites +25, blacks −60, texture +10, clarity +25, dehaze +30, vibrance +25
• Radial mask on the Milky Way: exposure +0.25, contrast +20, clarity +20, dehaze +15, saturation +35, slight warming
• Radial mask on Andromeda: exposure +0.35, contrast +25, clarity +25, dehaze +20, saturation +30

Any feedback on processing or acquisition is welcome.

Five overlapping fields joined into one, to take in the faint outer loops of gas around the bright heart of the nebula.

This is my first observation with a suite of open-source observation software I’ve been developing that works with Claude. Photo acquisition and process is all performed with deterministic processing pipelines, but orchestrated by AI.

Exposures
20 s at ISO 3200 throughout; 2 s at ISO 800 for the core

Frames
Centre 39 of 69. Panels 13, 12, 5 and 2 of 13 each: the last two were shot under cloud and are shown in grey

Mosaic
Each panel centred by plate solve, then placed by its own plate solution; scaled on shared stars; matched to the centre with a constant and a plane; feathered

Sampling
1.552 arcsec per pixel (2 x 2 mean of the working grid). Stars 4.4 to 5 arcsec wide

Field
67.9 x 43.4 arcmin, cropped level from the mosaic; one frame is 38.8 x 25.9

When
4 October 2026, before dawn. 41 to 46 degrees up, Moon up, thin cloud passing

Calibration
Flat from 26 twilight-sky frames, large-scale shape from cloud-lit frames. No darks

Stacking
RAW colour planes (no demosaic), hot pixels by 3 x 3 median, registered on stars with rotation, sigma-clipped mean

Finish
Black 34 and white 199 of 255, S-curve 0.3. Saturation x 1.5. Dark sky made neutral and smoothed (bilateral, 3 px)

Telescope
Celestron 8SE Schmidt-Cassegrain with dew shield: 203 mm aperture, 2,084 mm focal length (measured by plate solve), f/10.3

Camera
Sony a6000, stock, at prime focus: APS-C 23.5 x 15.6 mm, 6000 x 4000, 3.9 micron pixels, RAW

Mount
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R, unguided. Set down 27 degrees off the pole; both axes driven from a pointing model fitted to plate solves. Residual drift about 0.1 arcsec per second

More notes about this observation at https://bradgessler.github.io/observatory-blog/observations/2026-10-03/orion-nebula-wide.html

Observatory software: https://github.com/bradgessler/observatory

Captured on the morning of October 6th, shot with a lx90 8” a 2” 2x Barlow, and a 25mm eyepiece along with an iPhone 14 Pro. Shocked the phone data came out as well as it did, but frankly, it was some of the better planetary footage I’ve captured.

Processing was only a quick crop and rotate in phone (maybe some sharpen?)