u/jbastrophotos

"I usually do astrophotography on clear nights since I'm lucky enough to live in a Bortle 3-4 zone, but last night was my daughter's birthday party so my gear stayed packed away. When I woke up at 4:00 AM to grab my lunch box and keys by the door for work, I looked up and saw this.
It felt like a gentle nudge from the universe asking why I didn't image them last night, but it ended up being a really peaceful moment to start the workday

M-20

The Trifid Nebula (M20 or NGC 6514) is an active star-forming region located about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. It gets its name from the three prominent, dark lanes of interstellar dust that visually divide the glowing cloud into three distinct lobes. M20 is a unique and vibrant cosmic laboratory because it combines three distinct types of nebulae into a single object:
Emission Nebula: The glowing pink/red region is an H II region energized by intense ultraviolet radiation from massive young stars, which causes hydrogen gas to ionize and glow.
Reflection Nebula: The blue-colored region surrounding the center is made of dense interstellar dust that reflects the bright, blue light of nearby hot stars.
Dark Nebula: The thick, opaque filaments of dark brown dust run directly across the glowing gas, obscuring background light and creating the iconic "three-lobed" look.
More at www.jbastrophoto.com

8.70 hours with 4 minutes exposures at iso-1250

Taken with Unmodified Canon 60d through an Orion 8” newtonian astrograph with coma correcter, autoguided with a orion starshoot autoguider 60mm guide scope, all on a Celestron AVX mount.

Processing Pixlinsight: weighted batch processing, Background ext, astro solver, noisexterminator, blur terminator, histogram stretch, added mask curves saturations.
Photoshop: selective color adjustments, contrast, shadows & highlights,

Bortel skies 3

IC 342 The Hidden Galaxy: located relatively close to the Milky Way. Despite its size and actual brightness, its location behind dusty areas near the galatic equator makes it difficult to observe, leading to the

Taken with a 16 year oldUnmodified Canon 60d through an Orion 8” newtonian astrograph with coma correcter, autoguided with a orion starshoot autoguider 60mm guide scope, all on a 11 year old Celestron AVX mount.

92x240” 6h 8’ no darks, bias, or flats ISO-650

Processing: deepsky stacker for regester, stacking.

Pixlinsight: Background ext, noisexterminator, blur terminator, histogram stretch, added mask curves saturations,

Photoshop: selective color adjustments, levels, unmask sharpening filter

Bortle skies 3

https://www.jbastrophoto.com/ic-342

IC 63, famously known as the "Ghost of Cassiopeia," is a hauntingly beautiful nebula located roughly 550 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. This target is a combination emission and reflection nebula. It is shaped like a ghostly arrow pointing directly at the violently bright, eruptive variable star Gamma Cassiopeiae, which sits just 3 to 4 light-years away from the gas clouds. The intense ultraviolet radiation from this massive blue star is actively blasting, ionizing, and slowly eroding the delicate hydrogen-alpha gas filaments of the nebula into deep space.
This image is a successful processing rescue of uncalibrated archival data captured during a 3-night session back in October 2023. Imaging a faint, ghostly structure right next to a blindingly bright magnitude 2 star presents an extreme challenge for an uncooled DSLR sensor, especially when processing without dark frames or flat fields

Telescope: Orion 8-inch f/3.9 Astrograph (Focuser drawtube custom-cut with a bandsaw to clear the light path, upcycled Celestron NexStar 8i dew shield, and a handmade primary mirror aperture mask ring to hide the factory mirror clips and force clean star spikes).

Camera: Unmodified, uncooled Canon 60D

Acquisition Details:
Integration Time: 9 hours 32 minutes

Frames: Lights-143 x 4-minutes subs ISO-1250

Location: Taken at the Backyard Country Observatory in Clarksdale Missouri

processing: Pixnlsight
Astrometric Solution: ImageSolver applied to the main integrated master to secure coordinates.

Star Isolation: StarXTerminator run on the raw linear data to split the image into independent Starlessand Stars-Only working layers.

Linear Extraction: Automatic Background Extraction (ABE) and SPCC color calibration executed strictly on the starless canvas, ensuring a mathematically perfect, flat sky with zero star boundary artifacts.

Targeted AI Enhancements: NoiseXTerminator run on the empty sky layer for a silky-smooth background, while BlurXTerminator was run on the stars-only layer to sharpen the dense core and tighten my engineered diffraction crosshairs.

Reassembly & Stretch: PixelMath used to recombine the layers before applying a careful, manual HistogramTransformation added light mask for curve saturations.

Photoshop CS5
Selective colors, levels, contrast, shadows and highlights.

Melotte 15 is a young, vibrant open star cluster located roughly 7,500 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. It resides at the very center of the Heart Nebula (IC 1805) and is famously responsible for sculpting the surrounding glowing gas and dust into its spectacular cosmic shapes.

Backyard Engineering & Rig Modifications:
To extract maximum performance from an entry-level budget setup, this telescope and mount have been heavily modified with custom garage engine
Mount: 11-year-old Celestron AVX Mount (Carefully precision-balanced for a flip-free, all-night southern runway track).
Telescope: Orion 8-inch f/3.9 Astrograph (Focuser drawtube custom-cut with a bandsaw to clear the light path, upcycled Celestron NexStar 8i dew shield, and a handmade primary mirror aperture mask ring to hide the factory mirror clips and force clean star spikes).
Camera: Unmodified, uncooled Canon 60D
All from the Backyard Country Observatory Roll back 5x5 building.

processing: Pixnlsight
Astrometric Solution: ImageSolver applied to the main integrated master to secure coordinates.
Star Isolation: StarXTerminator run on the raw linear data to split the image into independent Starlessand Stars-Only working layers.
Linear Extraction: Automatic Background Extraction (ABE) and SPCC color calibration executed strictly on the starless canvas, ensuring a mathematically perfect, flat sky with zero star boundary artifacts.
Targeted AI Enhancements: NoiseXTerminator run on the empty sky layer for a silky-smooth background, while BlurXTerminator was run on the stars-only layer to sharpen the dense core and tighten my engineered diffraction crosshairs.
Reassembly & Stretch: PixelMath used to recombine the layers before applying a careful, manual HistogramTransformation stretch.
Acquisition Details:
Integration Time: 13.4 hours
Frames: Light Frames x 4-Minute Exposures at ISO-1250

Well guess im done with this project the forecast shows clouds rain an thunderstorms next 7 days. I had 3 strait clear cool nights I was able to get 10.15 hours of data. The 1st night was horrible from the scope in the observatory not being used for 5 month. It always seems to do like that?
M106 is the large galaxy upper left, its a barred spiral galaxy located in constellation Canes Venatici and is located 22, 25 million lightyears away from Earth.
The smaller Galaxy mid right of the image is NGC 4217 a edge on spiral galaxy, it is located 60 million lightyears away.

Taken with a 16 year old Unmodified Canon 60d through an Orion 8” newtonian astrograph with coma correcter, all on a 11 year old Celestron AVX mount.

Exposure:
203x3minutes 10.15 hours, 55 dark frames ISO-1250

Processing:
Pixlinsight: First time using batch weighted stacking, SCNR green, Background ext, noisexterminator, blur terminator, histogram stretch, SCNR, added mask curves saturations,
Photoshop: selective color adjustments, color balance highlights, highlight and shadows adjustments, levels

Bortle skies 3

Im going to start imagining galaxy M106 but its peaks at 10:25pm it get dark at 9:45pm here. So I decided since I havent had hardly any chances to get the scope out for a long time I decided to image a random object using 30s exposures with a high ISO (6000) while im waiting intill m106 gets into the west meridian. I chhose 51 whirlpool galaxy and for just 33×30s 16 minutes I didnt think it turned out too bad just a horrible background due to high ISO no calibration, dark, or bias.

Taken with a 16 year old Unmodified Canon 60d through an Orion 8” newtonian astrograph with coma correcter, all on a 11 year old Celestron AVX mount.

Processing: Siril for regester, stacking.
Pixlinsight: Background ext, noisexterminator, blur terminator, histogram stretch, added mask curves saturations,
Photoshop: selective color adjustments, color balance highlight some green and magenta, shadows and highlights, levels

Bortle skies 3

I haven’t had much clear nights lately, finally got the opportunity so I went to leo triplet galaxies. A lot of light frames were no good the first night, dont know if it was the seeing or because my telescope was just setting in the rool back observatory all winter not being used due to clouds.

Taken with a Canon 60D unmodified(16 years old) primed focused with a Orion 8 inch Newtonian astrograph, guided with a orion starshoot autoguider 60mm guide scope, all on a Celestron avx mount (11 years old) been sheltered with a roll back building observatory.

Exposure details: RAW iso-1250, 4-minutes exposures 18 hours

Processing: Deep sky stacker for stacking, Pixlnsight for dynamic crop, dynamic backgroung ext, blur Terminator, Noise Terminator, histogram stretch, add light mask used curves saturations, went to photoshop selective color blacks for background color adjustments, shadow and highlights, back to pixlnsight star mask for star reduction. I explained it the best I could this is like my normal work flow.