u/Tall-Beautiful-6186

One of my favorite summer targets finally getting some attention. IC 1318 is the sprawling emission complex surrounding Sadr in the heart of Cygnus, with two prominent "wings" of Hα separated by a dark dust lane.

Gear:

• Celestron C8 w/ Hyperstar (f/2.1)
• EQ6-R Pro
• ZWO ASI533MC Pro
• Optolong L-Ultimate 2"

Acquisition:

• 140 × 120s lights
• 4h 40m total integration
• Bortle 8/9

Processing (PixInsight): WBPP, SPCC, BlurX, GraXpert as opposed to DBE for this one), NoiseX, GHS stretch, StarX, color work on starless, recombined with screen blend.

GraXpert really earned its keep on this one, DBE struggled to find true background samples in such a nebula-dense field.

Caught about 1 hour and 23 minutes of narrowband from a Bortle 4 site, and 3 hours of broadband from my Bortle 8/9 backyard, then composited the two for the best of both worlds: punchy emission line color from the dark sky narrowband, and natural calibrated star colors plus continuum context from the longer broadband stack.

Captured on a Celestron C8 with Hyperstar at f/2.1, ZWO ASI533MC Pro, EQ6-R Pro mount. Narrowband through an Optolong L-Ultimate (3nm Ha + 3nm OIII). Processed in PixInsight using the Foraxx palette via NarrowbandNormalization, then screen blended the broadband stars onto the narrowband nebula.

Just for fun, if you shrunk the Crescent down to the size of a basketball, our solar system would be smaller than a single grain of sand inside it. The math of this hobby never stops being wild

• Narrowband: 1 hour 23 minutes from Bortle 4
• Broadband: 3 hours from Bortle 8/9
• Telescope: Celestron C8 with Starizona Hyperstar (f/2.1)
• Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro
• Mount: Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro
• Filter: Optolong L-Ultimate (3nm Ha, 3nm OIII)
• Guiding: PHD2
• Sequencing: NINA

Dreyer’s nebula and surrounding dark nebula complex, captured from my bottle 8/9 backyard with my celestron C8, asi533mc, eq6-r, hyperstar f/2, no filters fully broadband. This image is 4 hours of 30 second exposures, captured in NINA processed in pixinsight to emphasize the Rayleigh reflection and contrasting dark dust features

Barnard 352 is a small, dense dark nebula tucked away in the rich star fields of Cygnus. It's a much less photographed target than its famous neighbors (the North America Nebula, Pelican, Crescent), which made it an interesting challenge to bring out.

Captured from my Bortle 8-9 backyard with no filter, broadband, using a Celestron C8 with hyperstar V3 bringing total speed to f/2.1, ASI533MC Pro on an EQ6-R Pro, guided with PHD2, captured in NINA. About 4 hours (3.7 hours) of 60-second subs, drizzled 2x in WBPP.

Thanks for checking out my image of the galaxy group surrounding NGC 5906/5907 (Splinter or Knife's Edge Galaxy). These distant galaxies appear close but are actually insanely far apart.

• NGC 5907 top left main galaxy ~53 million light-years
• NGC 5905 second down on the right ~140 million light-years
• NGC 5908 top right corner ~150 million light-years

This image represents about 3 hours of 2 minute subs, captured with my usual rig - celestron nexstar 8se scope, ZWO ASI533MC Pro OSC camera -10C cooled, starizona hyperstar f/2.1, skywatcher eq6-r pro mount, no filters, captured in NINA, stacked and processed in pixinsight.

Thanks for checking out my capture of IC 5070 (Pelican) from bortle 8 skies last night!

This capture represents about 2 hours of 60-second captures with my nexstar 8SE, ASI533MC pro camera, skywatcher eq6-r pro, hyperstar C8 V3 f/2.1, no filters

This image of Messier 13 represents about 2 hours of 30-second exposures, captured from bortle 8 suburbs with my hyperstar rig unfiltered. CS!

Gear - Nexstar 8SE, skywatcher eq6-r pro mount, hyper star c8 v3 f/2.1, zwo asi533MC pro, no filters used, captured with NINA, stacked and processed in PI

An extreme close up of a chunk of the Horsehead Nebula, as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope, processed by me in pixinsight!

This image was processed from calibrated JWST NIRCam _i2d pipeline products downloaded from the MAST archive. Four narrow and medium-band filters were combined via channel combination and manually color-graded to produce this rendition of the Horsehead's photodissociation region (PDR) the thin ionization front where UV radiation from Sigma Orionis carves into the molecular cloud. I strongly recommend checking out the archive for practice processing: https://mast.stsci.edu/

Filters used: F090W · F187N (Paα) · F212N (H₂ 1-0 S1) · F470N (H₂ 0-1 S9 / [ArVI]) Color mapping: Channel combination with manual curves adjustment

Processing: PixInsight STF stretch, GHS, StarXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, MLT, LHE · Photoshop for detector gap correction

Data credit: NASA/ESA/CSA · STScI MAST Archive · Program 1192 (PI: Habart)

Thanks for checking out my capture of the Whale and Hockey Stick Galaxies - acquired last night, this image consists of about 4.5 hours of 120 second subs captured from bortle 8 suburbs with my ZWO ASI533MC, EQ6-R Pro, Hyperstar C8 V3 f/2, no filters. This target is directly overhead in the northern hemisphere so it was the perfect time to capture it. Really tried to accentuate the "whale" features like the fin and tail - hope you enjoy!

Last night I captured the moon at about 89% illumination with my nexstar 8SE reduced to f/6.3 to get a wider angle view. This image is about 11,750 frames captured over 3.5 minutes at 0.15MS / 130 gain in Sharpcap. Stacked in Autostakkert 4, processed in Registax 6 and PixInsight.

Last night I captured these stunning dark nebulae in Cygnus including LDN 897–902, all surrounding NGC 6914 (blue reflection nebula, lower left) and the van den Bergh reflection nebulae vdB 131 and 132. Dark and reflection nebulae are difficult targets from heavy light pollution, but the bright Hα dust clouds of Cygnus created stunning contrast that brought out the reflection and dark dust structure.

• 4 hours of 2-minute subs
• Celestron Nexstar 8SE
• ZWO ASI533MC Pro -10C
• No filters / broadband
• Hyperstar C8 v3 f/2.1
• Skywatcher EQ6-R pro mount
• Stacked with flats/dark flats/darks in SIRIL, processed in PixInsight

IC 443 - the jellyfish nebula - is a stunning galactic supernova remnant in the constellation Gemini. It's about to set behind the horizon until next year, so I decided to grab a couple final broadband frames to try to accurately represent star colors - especially the mag 3 red giant Propus that this nebula shares the frame with. This image represents a total of 8 hours of 120s exposures in narrowband (l-ultimate) and broadband (unfiltered) data captured throughout this spring. Captured with my zwo ASI533MC, skywatcher eq6-r pro, nexstar 8se, my starizona hyperstar c8 v3 which brings speed up to f/2.1, and my optolong l-ultimate 2" filter #jellyfishnebula #astrophotogography