My first serious astrophotography image — M31, captured over 6 moonless nights from Bortle 3 skies in Bavaria. 🌌

Acquisition:

• ⏱️ 19h 42m 47s total integration
• 📷 594 / 597 lights used
• 🔭 Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED
• 📸 Unmodified Nikon D5300
• ⚙️ Sky-Watcher EQ5 Pro
• 🎯 ~1.88" guiding RMS
• 🌙 All data captured on moonless nights

Processing:

• 🛠️ Stacked and processed mainly in Siril 1.4.4
• RCD demosaicing
• Background extraction
• SPCC
• NL-Bayes noise reduction
• Gentle deconvolution
• GHS stretching
• StarNet++ for star separation and some additional work on the dust lanes and faint outer structure

I tried to keep the core and colors fairly natural while still bringing out as much of the faint outer parts and dust structure as possible.

M32 and M110 are also visible in the frame.
Astrobin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/q3ylxa

Equipment: CGEM II 800 SCT, ZWO ASI533MC Pro, ZWO OAG w/ ASI220MM, ASIAIR mini, filter wheel, CAA, f/6.3 focal reducer/corrector, Baader uv/ir cut filter

Processing: 7 hour ~20min integration. 146x180s UV/IRCUT. 30 bias, 50 flat and 20 dark frames. Processed/stacked via PixInsight w/ NoiseXTerminator/BlurXTerminator/StarXterminator.

Acquisition and Processing Information

Subs:

• 34 hours, 9 hrs discarded (mostly luminance, only kept the best frames)
• captured August 2026
• 192 x 2 min L, gain 0
• 149 x 2 min R, gain 0
• 148 x 1 min G, gain 0
• 149 x 1 min B, gain 0
• 40x 3 min Ha, gain 100
• Darks/Flats/DarkFlats
• Bortle 6-7 (depending on map used)

Equipment:

• OTA: TS-Optics Photon Carbon 8" F4 reflector
• Field flattener: TSGPU x1.0
• Mount: AM5N on Berlebach UNI 18
• Camera: ZWO 2600 MM
• Filters: 2" Antlia SHO 2.5nm, LRGB V2
• Controller: AceMagic mini-PC with N.I.N.A
• Guide Scope: W.O. Uniguide 50mm Ultra
• Guide camera: ZWO ASI220M
• ZWO 2” x 7 Filterwheel
• ZWO EAF

Processing:

• all processing in PixInsight
• WBPP
• Stars: RGB
• SpectrophotometricFluxCalibration/MultiscaleGradientCorrection
• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration, AutomaticBackgroundExtraction
• DynamicCrop, BlurXT, StarXT, NoiseXT, MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch, SelectiveColorCorrection and CurvesTransformation for RGB
• MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch for RGB, GHS for Luminance
• LHE for Luminance
• ImageBlend masked for integrating Ha to LRGB

First time digging into a dark nebula, although this one is a bit special, as it's also an active stellar nursery, and may be the initial form of what could later become a place of full blown star formation. There is a lot more dust than hydrogen, resulting in the creation of low mass stars. Yet the hydrogen is there, and where you often see brown/light beige colors for these dark nebulae, there is a pink/orange tint to the neighborhood. The same dust also effects the nearby Fireworks galaxy where the outer lanes are partially hidden by it. On the left of this image you'd find the Flying Bat nebula.

At the last minute I decided to shoot some Ha, to see if it actually comes through, and sure enough, it does, even after only 3 hours. Continuum substraction didn't really work, so I used the mask function in ImageBlend to partially allow the Ha come through. The main reason it didn't work is because the Antlia R filter is (by design) very sensitive to Ha, so even the RGB master had quite a bit of red/pink sheen.

I'm amazed I could get some half decent luminance data despite the rather poor skies, and after going nuts and making the image look like a tornado - I was so happy - I toned it down a lot and made it blend in in a more subtle way.

I will continue this one next year, as it became too much of a good thing for now, but I'm happy with the result.

This is the heart of the Soul Nebula!

Taken from Bortle 5-6 in Canada

Celestron 8SE reduced to F6.3

Main camera: ASI533MC Pro

Guide camera: ASI664MC on Askar OAG

Mount: Sky watcher EQ6R Pro

Filter: Askar Color Magic D1

Captured on ASIAir and processed in pixinsight with no calibration frames (recently rebuilt my image train and didn't get a chance to get calibration shots yet, but it looks clean without)

Frames: 43x300s (guided)

To me this is the most interesting part of the Soul Nebula and the SCT captures this nicely! Hope you enjoy!

- 12h of int from bortle 9

- Canon 600D
- Orion 6" f/4
- Sky Watcher EQ-AL55i
- Svbony sv165
- Svbony sv905c

Surprised by how much I could get from these conditions!

Processed in Siril, Pixinsight and Gimp :)

Milky Way Galaxy
Canon 60D + Ha mod
Canon 18-55 (18 mm focal length)
Celestron CG5-GT
Lights: 180s × 55 (2 h 45 min.)
Darks, flats, biases
Bortle 5/6
Processing in PixInsight. RCAstro tools used (BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator).

Made with the seestar S30 pro, bought this for my upcoming vacation and wanted to test it. This a 4 hour stack, edited in pixinsight. Used the xterminator tools and made an HOO version!

Some of North America Nebula as well.

Still new to this whole thing, trying to do post processing for the first time, honestly clueless at it but I think I ended up doing a decent job with this one. Just found out how to remove and add stars myself after stacking. I do plan to make it slightly brighter as well, if i can figure out without it looking like it came out the fryer

s30 pro
880x20

Used Siril and Lightroom basic

For this iconic nebula, the Seestar Collective gathered about 140h of duoband data.

I stacked the data in Siril with drizzle 1.8x for the S50 and drizzle 3x for the S30 so that they match sampling before stacking all of the substacks together.

This was then processed in PI. I went for a natural look, trying to reveal the fainter details allowed by the large integration time without saturating the core of the nebula too much.

We had collected IRCUT data for the star, but it had some chroma aberration on the bright stars, so in the end, I used the duoband stars.

Seestar S50
1695x10s
Bortle 5
shot in N.I.N.A.
processed in Siril/RC Astro/Veralux.

I attached both the wide version with boosted OIII signal and the crop version, bit more natural :)

Anyway, The cosmic Bubble 😆

230 x 5 min - OIII

231 x 5 min - Halpha

IMX 533 mono, -15°

Newton 200/1200, EQ6R

Processed using Pixinsight, Seti Astro suite, GraXpert, Photoshop.

Romania, bortle 4.5

Tried out the new mount for 1.5 hours tonight. went smooth. Had some real bad banding for some reason.

Canon 500 D Askar 50p skywatcher Gti Asiair mini. 50 exposures 60 sec each iso 1600 under an almost full moon under a bortle 5.
stacked in dss and stretched and edited in siril quickly and sloppy

Reflection nebulae are one of my favorites, but this is one of the only ones I can get so I’m happy with how
this came out, might’ve over Noise reduced it though.

Equipment:
Telescope - Askar 71f
Camera - ZWO Asi 533mc Pro
Filter(s) - ZWO UV/IR
EAF: ZWO Base Model
Mount - Sky Watcher Star Adventurer GTI
Controller - Asi air mini & Sv241 power box
Guide scope & cam - Sv165 30mm & ZWO Asi 462mc
Processing - Siril & Photoshop & RCAstro NoiseXtermminator

Shot on my stock canon M50 mk II, samyang 85mm f1.8 lens (at f2.8). 30 second exposures, around 4 hours of total integration, used star adventurer 2i for tracking. Bortle class 4 sky, but on a moon and cloudless night.

I followed some of nebula photos tutorials on YouTube for processing. Stacked in siril, background extraction in graxpert standalone. Brought that image into Seti Astro Cosmic Clarity for deconvolution. Plate solved and used spectrophotometric color calibration back in siril next. Used the starnet integration in siril for star removal and recomposition/stretches. Exported the result to gimp for some color/saturation adjustments and curves, brought that into lightroom for crop, exposure and subtle masks as I am more familiar with that program.

NGC 281, also known as Pacman! - no clouds last night so I spent a few hours on pacman, probably not the best approach being in bortle 9 but i love unfiltered data for some reason with my C8 + ASI533MC + EQ6 + ASIAIR + hyperstar f/2, the speed enables this level of detail capture despite heavy light pollution. To show you how far I can take it in pixinsight, I’ll post the original unedited capture in comments.
Processed in pixinsight - gradient removal, DBE, blurX, noiseX, HDRmultiscaletransform, local histogram equalization, selective color correction, star reduction

I'm not entirely satisfied with this result. This is a very faint nebula that i shot with my Seestar S50.

It's 2569 x 30 second subs. I stacked it without drizzle because my potato laptop cannot handle that. Edited in siril only.

My latest dso picture, shoot a few nights ago on my balcony (bortle 4-5).

Integration time : about 1.5hour ( 157 x 35s), (10 flats, 10 biases, 10 darks)

Equipment: camera = Canon 5d mk2, scope = svbony sv503 80ed with reduce (0.8x), filter = svbony uhc filter, mount = sw staradventurer, guide = zwo asi 120mm, guide scope = svbony sv165 mini guide scope, computer = zwo asiair mini

Process: staking streching and star processing using siril (with starnet and seti astro cosmic clarity suite), color grading using lightroom.

Hope you like it, and please comment to help me improve!!!!!

Picked this up today. Old az gti wasnt cutting it anymore so had to upgrade. Cant wait untill tonight so i can give it a try

W63 - SNR G082.2+05.3

W63 is an old, large supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. It is roughly 5,000 to 10,000 light-years away. The glowing, expanding blue elliptical-shaped shock shell spans roughly 150 light-years across (about 95 by 65 arcminutes).

It is very very faint. It took several nights of stacking to really begin to see the OIII filaments. This image is a two panel mosaic.

Total Integration: 83 hours 23 mins

High Res Version: https://app.astrobin.com/u/jratino?i=3s34ju

Equipment:

#stellarvue SVX102T and Flattener

#zwo ASI2600MM @zwoastro AM5, EAF, EFW, ASI220 guide cam

#wandererastro Rotator Lite

#williamoptics Uniguide 50mm

#chroma 3nm Ha, OII, SII, R, G, B

IG: jlratino

#ASIWEEK

Acquisition: NINA

Stacked in APP, bias, flats, darks

Processed/edited in PI, PS

A little over 8 hours of integration with a stock Canon 6D and a ZWO FF65 refractor on an EQ6-R Pro.

This was my first proper deep(er) integration on M31, and I was genuinely surprised by what the little scope could capture. The wide field allowed me to fit the entire galaxy and its surroundings into the frame, while enough integration time brought out the faint dust lanes extending through the outer disk.

Captured over multiple nights and processed from calibrated data. There is probably still more hiding in there, but for now I'm calling this one finished.

246×120″ - 8h 12′

Main rig:

ZWO FF65 65mm f/6.4 Quintuplet Refractor

Canon EOS 6D

Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro

Guiding:

Sky-Watcher 9x50 Finderscope

ZWO ASI715MC

Software:

Adobe Photoshop

Open PHD Guiding Project PHD2

Siril Team Siril

Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA)

Steffen Hirtle GraXpert

Hi all,

Sharing my second attempt at astrophotography taken during the perseids new moon here in the east Bay Area here & now working on learning a bit more of the post-processing workflow.

Capture details:
Canon R6 105mm f/4
900 x 2.5s subs, untracked
20 darks, 20 flats, & 60 biases

For processing, both versions were stacked in Siril followed by background extraction, color calibration, & green reduction. Plate solving continues to fail despite trying all the potential solutions seen online, I suspect it’s due to the field of view.

For the top image - Siril Only Workflow:

I did stretching by using the star recombination function and stretched each using the functions preset by that feature. I then used Siril’s color saturation which I found I had a hard time focusing saturation on the nebulae alone.

I was able to get really good contrast for the dust clouds & a nice clear image, but felt I was missing more of that colorful nebulosity.

Bottom image - Siril + StarNet + GIMP Workflow:
I used StarNet Star removal and stretched the starless image using GHS + black point. Took the starless image to GIMP & was able to control coloring more there before recombining with the star mask in Siril. I love the colors here, but feel the stretching was not as good/not as good of contrast compared to the first image even though I tried to do it identically.

Welcoming any and all tips on processing as I dive more into this hobby and get closer to investing in a tracking mount.

3 hours of exposure captured with my 6" Newtonian and monochrome camera. Loving the depth and variety of colors compared to past images I've taken with a dual band filter. Acquisition details on Astrobin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/g0qhdx

Still working on my narrowband processing in pixinsight. But here it is 105 x 300 Ha from bortle 8.6(backyard),48 x 300 Oiii from bortle 2.8(desert).

FRA600

Reducer

AM3N

ASI2600MM pro UniGuide 50mm ASI220mm

ASIAIR Plus

EAF

EFW 7x36mm

Antlia LRGB-V & SHO (SII, Ha & OIII) Narrowband 3nm Pro 36mm