I captured this Image in the night after the Total Solar Eclipse, during my trip to Spain.
Equipment:
Telescope: SvBony SV555
Mount: Explore Scientific iEXOS-100
Camera: ZWO ASI2600 MC Pro
Guide Scope: SvBony SV165
Guide Cam: ZWO ASI120mm
+ ZWO AsiAir Mini
Acquisition:
65x180s (3,25h) at Gain 101 in an Bortle 2 Night in Spain. Laguna de Gallocanta.
Processing:
Stacked in Siril, processed in PixInsight finalized in Photoshop.
The total solar eclipse over the 800 year old Burgos Cathedral from Spain. This final result contains much more data from the multiple exposures of the solar corona, even revealing the night side of the Moon.
Equipment: Canon 6D Mark II, Sigma 150-600mm lens.
I captured this Image in the night after the Total Solar Eclipse, during my trip to Spain.
Equipment:
Telescope: SvBony SV555
Mount: Explore Scientific iEXOS-100
Camera: ZWO ASI2600 MC Pro
Guide Scope: SvBony SV165
Guide Cam: ZWO ASI120mm
+ ZWO AsiAir Mini
Acquisition:
50x180s (2,5h) at Gain 101 in an Bortle 2 Night in Spain. Laguna de Gallocanta.
Processing:
Stacked in Siril, processed in PixInsight finalized in Photoshop.
I could only take around 3.5 hours of this target because the weather was not behaving... But still it came out pretty good! Next time I will add Ha data as well
Equipment and acquisition:
- OTA: Askar 71F
- Mount: Teseek 17
- Camera: ASI585MC Air
- 102 x 120 sec (approx. 3.5 hours)
Processing (Pixinsight)
- WBPP 2X drizzle, dynamic crop, SPCC, SPFC, multiscale gradient correction, blurX, starX
- Starless: setiastro statistical stretch, curves transformation with range and color masks, createHDRimage, noiseX
- Stars: Setiastro star stretch, star recombination in Pixelmath
I put 2 color palettes cause I'm not sure which one I like more.
20 hours of total integration
180x180 second exposures HA
220x180second exposures Oiii
I may add SII soon, but I'm not sure
Gear
Mount - Teseek 14
Telescope - Samyang 135mm
Camera - Touptek ATR585M
Filters - Touptek 6.5nm SHO
Stacked in Siril and processed in SASPro, siril and Graxpert
BACKGROUND
📷 Camera: Canon EOS 6D mod.
🔎 Lens: Samyang 14mm f/8
🔭 Mount: Star Adventurer 2i
🌌 Acquisition: ISO1600
⏰ Integration: 150x60s (2.5h)
💻 Processing: Siril, GIMP, Snapseed
📍 Location: 36°47'34.79"N, 12°3'13.03"E
📅 Date: Aug. 11, 2026
I assume it is a SpaceX rocket (early hours of Sunday 16 Aug 2026) in northern Ontario, Canada
This summer, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory launched its 10-year astronomical survey to create the most comprehensive, cinematic record of the universe. Equipped with the largest digital camera ever built, this observatory, located in northern Chile, can capture in a single image an area 45 times the size of the moon. By tracking the night sky over 10 years, researchers hope to map the solar system and Milky Way galaxy in unprecedented detail, learn more about the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and advance science in ways we can’t even predict.
While thousands of people played a part in making the Rubin Observatory a reality, Tony Tyson played a formative role, acting initially as the facility’s founding director and now its chief scientist.
Hello there. So, I've been totally obsessed with Astronomy for more than a decade (since middle school). Over the years, it has become much more than a casual interest. I've literally engaged myself with astronomy almost every single day, spending countless hours reading books, watching lectures and other related videos, stargazing, chasing astronomical events, practicing astrophotography and most importantly, studying the subject on my own.
And by "studying", I mean going far beyond surface-level studying, where I'd fall into never-ending rabbit holes. I'm never satisfied with surface-level answers, so I almost always end up researching a concept by multiple points of view, i.e. learning the physics, chemistry and mathematics behind this particular concept as well as combining this knowledge with philosophy. The reason I'm starting the post this way is to clarify the following: I'm very certain that THIS is what I would ideally like to pursue, without a doubt.
Now that I made this clear, let's get to my current situation:
I'm an Environmental Engineering student in a university in Greece and I'm soon going to be graduating from that department, with a very high grade of 9.5/10. The degree I'm finishing is an Integrated Master's degree (which is recognized as a Master's in most universities in Europe). I also have a very strong background in physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology and literally everything related to all kinds of sciences, so I'm sure that this won't be a barrier for me.
I always wanted to pursue a degree in astronomy, but for whatever reason, I did not apply for the respective university departments when I had the chance, around 7-8 years ago. To clarify, I genuinely love my degree and I do not regret studying it, but I've always felt like something was "missing". For the last two years, I've been re-thinking my choices and I have decided to take it seriously this time. I want to actively pursue a career in the field of astronomy/astrophysics, but I don't know whether I have what it takes, in terms of academic requirements. Or even where to start.
I'm not quite sure whether I'm mostly interested in pursuing an academic career or just working in the field, so I would be open to considering both possibilities. Also, I'm willing to travel and live in any country in Europe if that's what it takes.
So my questions are:
Is it realistically possible to get into astronomy/astrophysics with an Environmental Engineering degree? If so, how far could I potentially go?
Would I need to essentially start over with another Bachelor's degree, or could I use my existing degree and go directly into a relevant Master's/PhD program? Is the lack of an undergraduate degree in physics, mathematics or astronomy going to be a major obstacle?
Are there particular subjects, courses, qualifications, or steps you'd recommend I pursue?
I would be particularly interested to hear from people that are actually working/studying in the field or have any kind of first-hand experience. Any kind of help would be appreciated. If you have any particular university department or programme to recommend, I'd truly appreciate it!
TL;DR: Just read the final questions, I guess.
Recently have went from a Seestar S30 Pro to a full setup.
This is my first full Astro image taken on my new setup.
This was taken with a Redcat 51, AM3N and a 585mc air. Exposure was roughly 30 x 120secs. Hope you like!
I'm 1/2 way through my M31 run, 89 x120 L, 30 x 180 R, 30 x 180 G, 29 x 180 B. going to add 120 L to stack tonight, then an hour of Ha at 300 sec. Ran everything through astro wizard then SyQon stuff in pixinsight. Bortle 2.9 outside twentynine palms.
FRA600
Reducer(3.9 at 420mm)
AM3N
ASI2600MM pro UniGuide 50mm ASI220mm
ASIAIR Plus
EAF
EFW 7x36mm
Antlia LRGB-V & SHO (SII, Ha & OIII) Narrowband 3nm Pro 36mm
I captured the Eclipse from Chesterton Windmill, Warwickshire, UK.
We had a great time, it was my first time shooting any solar photography so my attempt at a time-lapse wasn't very successful, but I still got some lovely photos that I'm going to print.
The first one here is a composite of the stages I used in the apex composite I made, I really liked how the clouds that interfered later on gave it some texture!
Full, high-res (2.5K to 28K) and time-lapse are in here:
Through a search project that honestly had a bug in it (long story, happy to tell it in comments), I ended up pulling data on a star nobody had ever studied. Not a single paper. TYC 6884-164-1, a sun-like star about 470 light years away in Sagittarius.
It's disappearing.
Completely quiet from 2014 to mid-2018, then it started dropping huge chunks of its brightness for days at a time. Some years it's fading on 1 in every 3 nights. The average dip takes about half the star's light. The deepest one caught, 92% and that one isn't a lonely data point, three separate cameras caught the star crashed that same week, under dark sky. On the worst nights it drops below the survey's detection limit entirely.
I've spent two days trying to kill it. A comparison star sitting on the *same exposures* holds flat at ±0.02 mag while mine drops nearly 3 magnitudes. The dips ignore the moon (identical phase distribution to quiet nights).
No registry on Earth had this star listed as variable. I submitted it to VSX yesterday. It's still dipping this month.
If it's real, here's where it would sit. This class is called "mature dippers", sun-like stars that suddenly start deep irregular fading, probably from planetary collision debris and every one ever found fits on one hand:
TYC 6884-164-1 = 92% (>98% on the worst nights)
ASASSN-21qj = 84%
TYC 8830-410-1 = >50%
Boyajian's Star = 22%
That 92% isn't one stray point either, three separate cameras caught the star crashed that same week, under dark sky, while a comparison star on the same exposures didn't move.
Some things which may help:
- Anyone who can pull TESS, it's TIC 169213609. Space-based data settles this instantly.
- Anyone with access to ASAS-SN raw images, eyes on the actual frames from the deep nights.
- Southern hemisphere observers, one independent measurement this week would be gold.
- Or just tell me what I've missed. I want this killed properly or confirmed properly. Artifacts can happen for many different reasons.
Check it yourself, it's all public: asas-sn.osu.edu, Sky Patrol V2, cone search RA 292.06268, Dec -27.44410, radius 15 arcsec, source 489626624823. Years of data sitting right there.
If it's real, it's one of the deepest members of a star class you can count on one hand (the ASASSN-21qj / Tabby's Star family). If it's an artifact, I'll post that too. Everything so far has been done in public, corrections included.
I might be more than 20 reprocesses deep into this nebula at this point. I just know that my first attempt looked like this.
I found that processing this nebula with my very limited skills is way harder than I imagined as it presented several challenges, namely keeping the core under control while maintaining the color as natural as possible, bringing the surrounding nebulosity up and teasing as much detail from both the dusty surroundings and the object itself.
At some point I also discovered that I managed to capture some faint blue hues in the core and I had to try to bring them out in the final image! To do that I used color preserving stretches only.
I'm sure I'll come back to this eventually, but I can say I am sort of satisfied for now.
Acquisition:
Around 7h30m worth of 60s subs in Bortle 6/7 fully calibrated and dithered.
Equipment:
Evostar 72ED, iEXOS 100, ASI 533MC, Baader UV/IR cut, 0.85x reducer+flattener, rotator+filter holder, SVBony 40mm F/4 guidescope, ASI 662MC guide camera with pale yellow no.8 and UV/IR cut filters.
Processing details:
Drizzle preprocessing and stacking in Siril at 1x scale and gaussian model. Perform first SPCC. Split into channels, background extraction to each in GraXpert. Recombine and second SPCC in Siril (average spiral galaxy). Deconvolution. First denoise in GraXpert. Generate starless image and star mask in Siril. Black point shift, asinh as the first stretch, light GHS with selection to faint nebulosity with black point shift and light inverse GHS to dark lanes iteratively all with human weighted luminance. Second noise reduction in GraXpert. À trous wavelets transform to higher layers in Siril along with a further stretch selected to fainter nebulosity and SCNR. Desaturate in Siril. Slight color balance adjustments in Gimp. Further stretches to brighter surroundings and main nebulosity in Siril.
Open star mask, asinh, SCNR and unpurple filter. Recombine and final black point shifts.
Heart & Soul Nebula shot with an unmodified DSLR from Hohe Wand, Austria
Equipment used:
Canon 7D MKii
Canon 70-200mm f.4
Star Adventurer 2i
ISO 1600
Total exposure time 3 hours (180x60)
Stacked with Siril, star removal pass
Graded with Lightroom Classic
no flat frames