Taken from Fishers, IN on 2026/10/06 about 06:40AM.
This happened right after the ocultation of Jupiter by the moon.
It's a single exposure and only cropped; still working on an HDR version.
Taken with a Celestron C6, 1500mm focal length and a Canon R6 Mark ii.
This is the Ghost of Cassiopeia nebula (IC63). I've photographed it before and I really like this nebula. It's located in the center of the Cassiopeia constellation, the W shaped constellation. It's very bright and can be found easily. It reminds me of a dementor from Harry Potter hehe.
I spent 5 nights photographing it and gathered about 20 hours of useful data for it. The nights are still relatively short, so happy I got 5 clear nights in a row to photograph this target!
Gear:
Telescope: William Optics GT81
Camera: ZWOASI533MC
Filter: Optolong l'extreme
Capture around 400 lights of 180 seconds each
No calibration frames
Processed in PixInsight
Crop-DBE-BxT-StarXTerminator-split Ha/O-process individually - stretch and combine them- stretch and combine stars
First time shooting the Pleiades.
Canon EOS R5 (stock)
RF 70-200mm f/2.8 L at 200mm
Star Adventurer 2i, on a tripod
~40 min total integration (121 x 20s subs)
Bortle 4 skies
Processed in Siril
The Andromeda Galaxy in HALRGB - a sea of one trillion stars, and our closest major galatic neighbor.
I took this image with the 2nd telescope I ever purchased (all the way back in 2020) - the William Optics Z61, which has sat on a shelf for many years collecting dust (and not the good kind of space dust - just regular dust). I spent the last 6 months working on upgrading the scope to get it functional/automated. Its wide field-of-view is perfect for capturing objects as large as Andromeda. I'm excited to have it added back in my arsenal!
Acquisition Details:
Light Frames (~12 hours):
Gear:
Editing (Pixinsight):
I can't believe I managed to resolve Jupiter's red spot with only 4 inches of aperture!
The image is an extreme crop into my lunar mosaic with separately stacked Jupiter sequences painted in before egress and with egress in-progress.
I hope you like them!
Gear: ZWO FF107 APO, ZWO ASI715C planetary camera, Celestron CGX mount
Software: SharpCap 4.1, Autostakkert!4, AstroSurface, Pixinsight, Affinity Photo 2, DarkTable
This is a brand new version of the Pleiades (M45) from my backyard in Aveyron, France.
I actually captured over 10 hours of data on this target. However, since M45 is extremely bright and my telescope is very fast (f/3.4), I decided to try a ruthless culling approach. I threw away 85% of my subs and only stacked the absolute best ones with perfect seeing/FWHM. I ended up with only 106 frames of 60 seconds (1h 46m total).
The sacrifice in signal-to-noise ratio was completely worth it for the massive gain in sharpness and resolution in the blue reflection dust. What do you guys think? Are you strict with frame culling on bright objects, or do you stack everything?
Equipment:
Acquisition & Processing:
Full HD image on my website: see First comment
Pleaides was one of my first targets when I got into astrophotography last year. I did a little over an hour with 1 minute exposures at the time. Looking back at that image this year, it was obvious I had blown out the stars and overstretched/oversaturated the colors. This year I decided to try 8 to 10 hours woth 30 second exposures. I think it turned out much better.
Exposures: 1191 x 30 seconds (9hrs 55mins 30sec)
Equipment:
Sky Watcher Wave 100i
ASI 2600MC Pro
Askar FRA400
William Optics 32mm Guide Scope
ASI 220MM Guide Camera
Processing:
Spcc, BlurXterminator, STF stretch in Pixinsight (removing stars and using ghs on this target was just too difficult for me lol)
Levels, curves, enhance dso in photoshop
NoiseXterminator in Pixinsight
Final touches in photoshop
The Iris Nebula over two nights at Jordan Lake, North Carolina — my latest Seestar S30 Pro image.
Equipment: Seestar S30 Pro, broadband IRCUT filter, gain 200.
Capture: October 6–7 and October 7–8, 2026, Big Woods Road area at Jordan Lake.
Integration: 722 × 30 seconds = 6 hours 1 minute.
Processing: Siril with the NaZtronomy Smart Telescope script (1× drizzle), crop, plate solving and SPCC; GraXpert background extraction; PixInsight with BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator, MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch and gentle local contrast. Stars processed separately and recombined.
I like the blue center against the surrounding dust. Still learning with each image—constructive feedback welcome!
This image was taken under Bortle 4,5 Skies with my Dwarf 3 Smart telescope and 8 hours of exposure time.
•stacking in Siril
•BGE, denoise in GraXpert
•deconvolution with BlurX
•Star removal with StarX
•stretching with ghs in Siril
•Curves, Color adjustments and further editing aswell as Star recomposition in Affinity
•some final touches added in Lightroom
Over 13 hours Luminance, 2 hours R, G and B each.
Taken with an Ultracat108 and an ASI2600MM on a AM5N over three nights around last new moon.
I like how the nebula in this framing looks like an Ent from Lord of the rings 😀
Narrowfield so you can't see the North America shape x)
Total ~11h25 of int :)
Orion 6" f/4
miniCAM8M EVO
Svbony SV165
Svbony SV905c
Bortle 8/9
Processed in Siril, Pixinsight & Gimp
Seestar S-50 Pro, EQ-Mode, 120 x 60s Subs
Processed in Stacking/Astro Wizard
Hubble Palette on the 2nd set.
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:
220x180s at Gain 101 in Bortle 7.
Processing:
Stacked in DSS, processed in PixInsight finalized in Photoshop.
Equipment:
Stock Canon EOS R5
Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM
iOptron HAE29C-EC Mount
ASIAIR Mini
UniGuide 32 guide scope
ASI120MM guide camera
Acquisition:
133*180" (6h33mm) subs @ ISO1600 and f/4 under Bortle 2 skies.
Master flat
Master bias
Processing:
Stacked in PixInsight with Weighted Batch Preprocessing
BlurXTerminator
Color Calibration using standard daylight values for Canon R5 sensor
Color Correction Matrix from DXOMark applied with Pixel Math
GradientCorrection
FindBackground to locate darkest area in image
Background Neutralization w/ that region
StarXterminator + CorrectMagentaStars to fix chromatic aberration
Put it all back together
DeepSNR at 0.9 strength for noise reduction
MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch
CurvesTransformation to pull out the nebula a little
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I spent all night freezing in my car for this, but it was worth it. I'm very pleased with the amount of detail I was able to pull out on this target. Especially in the dimmer dust clouds that often get left behind in narrowband renditions of the Heart Nebula.
A higher quality image file is available on my AstroBin: https://www.astrobin.com/4373b8/
Here’s my latest attempt at capturing the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A), located in the constellation Cepheus, about 2,400 light-years away.
I really love the intricate dust structures and the way the glowing hydrogen brings this region to life. It’s definitely one of my favorite deep-sky targets!
Hope you enjoy the result! Clear skies!
Any feedback or suggestions are always welcome!
My second attempt at Andromeda, processed with Siril and graXpert.
It was shot on an 85mm lens at f1.8 and 2" shutter with 140 light frames on a sony A7iv. I don't have a tracking mount, thus the short shutter. My processing folder is sitting at 140 GB... 😂
I also shot dark flats or would they be dark lights? I shot them with lens cap on.
I had some scripting help from Claude for Siril as I couldn't figure out the initial stacking and using the dark flats. Going to try to process fully manually next time, Claude created a PDf guide for me to follow.
No PCC
Removed green and purple tint in Siril.
Upscaled and noise reduction in Topaz Photo (high fidelity V2 upscaling, minimal noise reduction as it looked weird.)
Contrast/Clarity/Noise reduction in Lightroom.
Acquisition
Processing
This is a reprocess of my first M31. Biggest gains came from BlurXTerminator and from not clipping the shadows, which brought out the faint outer disc. Next time: better focus and fresh calibration frames. Feedback welcome!
