r/DWARFLAB

Bortle 3 about 90 mins of exposure. Mosaic mode. 30 sec subs 60 gain Dwarf mini

Honestamente, pensé que la última versión que publiqué aquí estaba increíble...

No sé qué pensar de esta.

I shot this 5 days ago with my dwarf mini with a 4 panel mosaic processed in siril with cosmic clarity denoise and cosmic clarity sharpening i removed the stars then i streached the nebulas separately

Re edited of some pics since i got Astro Wizard.

~8 h integration time. 60s exposures, 60 gain, EQ mode, under Bortle 4 - 5 sky. 2nd picture shows also Flying Geese Cluster (NGC 6939) above, to the right. Processed in Siril, GraXpert. Clear skies!

Hubble Palette Edit of IC1805 (Heart Nebula)

Shot with the Dwarf Mini and Edited in Astro Wizard.

232x15s with 60 Gain. I think it turned out pretty ok.

Around 6 hours from Bortle 7 with Dwarf 3. Used duo band filter.

Various multi stacks, between a Holiday in bortle 2 and bortle 6 at home. All processed in Siril, using rc astro tools, nazstronomy for stacking, and Hubble colour scripts. Still work to be done on my processing workflow. I love this scope. Can't wait to add to these stacks.

Primer mosaico de 2x2 con el Dwarf 3. Procesado con Stellar y después con Astrowizard.

Esto de los inicios de astrofotografía es muy divertido 😃

Tomas: 531 / 552

Exposición: 30s

Ganancia: 60

Filtro: Astro

Fecha: 17-08-2026

Tiempo total: 4 h 25 min

Preface by saying I’m not knew to photography, I do it passionately and professionally ☺️

Tonight the weather was good for trying from my backyard, with a bortel sky of 7, but clear and not humid. I’m on Long Island in NY.

I started at 10:30p in EQ Mode, Duo-Band, 30 second exposures, gain of 60 and went to almost 400 frames. Then ran it through Stellar Studio…first mind blown… and then took it into camera raw and Photoshop and did some spot color correction and level adjustments (plus sharpening, upscaling and noise reduction). Now mind absolutely blown!

I think the DwarfMini is now officially my most favorite Xmas gift ever. I’m going to enjoy the heck of this thing!!!!

I’m traveling to much darker skies next weekend and can’t wait to try it out there!

One month into astrophotography with a €370 Dwarf Mini… and I think I’m officially hooked

Hi everyone!

I’m continuing my journey into the absolutely incredible world of astrophotography, which started about a month ago when I bought a Dwarf Mini.

I posted my first image of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula here a little while ago, and I was already seriously impressed by what such a tiny telescope could produce.

For that image, I stacked data from 3 nights, roughly 700 frames in total , and did most of the processing with Dwarflab’s Stellar Studio, which honestly already does an amazing job. I only made a few minor adjustments afterward in Lightroom: mostly contrast and a little sharpening.

But then I decided to try some dedicated astrophotography processing software.

I started playing with AstroWizard because it looked pretty beginner-friendly and…

Damn.

I think I’ve just discovered that taking the pictures is only half the battle. 😅

I had no idea how much of the final image quality actually comes from the processing stage. Background extraction, noise reduction, deconvolution, stretching, color work… suddenly I’m realizing there’s an entire second hobby hiding *after* the telescope has finished capturing the data.

So I went back to the exact same 3 nights of data, rebuilt the mega-stack and processed everything again.

And I’m honestly blown away by the difference.

This is the result.

What do you guys think?

I genuinely never expected to be able to produce images like this after only one month in the hobby, especially with a telescope that cost me around €370.

And now I think I’ve officially been bitten by the astrophotography bug.

Because of course, instead of simply enjoying what I already have, I’m now looking at the “next step”:

Dedicated astro camera.

Motorized equatorial mount.

Telescope.

Guiding.

Filters.

Mini PC…

And I’m slowly discovering something else:

If you want to build a setup that gives you the same kind of integrated, almost frictionless experience as these little smart telescopes…

Well… it’s definitely not a €370 setup anymore. 😂

I may have opened a very expensive door.

Eye of God (C63) refers to the Helix Nebula (also cataloged as NGC 7293). Located about 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, it is one of the closest and most famous planetary nebulae to Earth, formed when a dying Sun-like star shed its outer gas layers.

Dwarf 3, 45 second exposures with 60 gain from Bortle 7. Processed in Siril using Naztronomy scripts.

My backyard is a shocker. A neighbour's willow eats most of the south-west and the rooflines take everything low, so there's a fair chunk of sky I just can't use. I was spending more time working out whether something would finally clear that willow than I was actually imaging.

So I built an iPhone app for it, which I've called Caelo. You hold the phone up and shuffle around in one place, and it helps you map your real trees and rooflines off the phone's sensors. Everything after that gets filtered through your own personal skyline: what's worth pointing at tonight, how long you've actually got before the trees block it, and which months a target is worth chasing at all given your own backyard horizon. It's quite willing to tell you tonight isn't worth it.

I've included the DWARF 3 and the DWARF Mini as built-in scope presets (full disclosure: I own a Seestar S50 myself, but I want to support as many smart scopes as I can), so the app works to a 15 to 75 degree practical alt-az band rather than a generic one. Fair warning on that band: DwarfLab don't publish a mount limit anywhere in the manual, and the closest thing is their advice to aim above 30 degrees, which their app draws as a red zone on the altitude curve. I've gone lower than that on the floor because a suburban horizon doesn't leave you much choice, and I've capped the top at 75 because of the stacking trouble people report up near the zenith in alt-az. Both ends are my call, not a spec, so tell me if I've got them wrong.

The bit I'd most like some folks to test doesn't need a clear night. Mapping your horizon works in daylight, only takes a few minutes using your iPhone, and gives you a usable-sky percentage at the end. If you're up for trying it, give it a go and tell me what your yard scored and whether the shape it drew matches what you can actually see out there. That's the single most useful thing anyone can send me, and you don't have to wait on the weather for it.

A few apps do versions of this now, some of them free. I'd rather you tried them all and told me where mine falls short than take my word for it.

The details: iPhone only, iOS 18 or later, no LiDAR needed. No ads, no tracking, no account to create, and the horizon map never leaves your phone. It'll be free with a one-time unlock for the looking-ahead bits (core app functions are free), no subscription, and everything's unlocked during the beta.

Comment here or DM me and I can send you a TestFlight invite via email.