Dumbbell nebula :)

Spent quite some time on it, collecting hydrogen alpha when the moon was not allowing for anything else

36.5 hours Halpha, 3nm Antlia filter

19 hours OIII, 12nm Astronomik filter

Romania, Bortle 4.5

Processed in Pixinsight, Seti Astro suite, GraXpert, Photoshop.

IMX 533 mono, -15°

Newton 200/1200

EQ6R

A new image featuring WR 134, a Wolf-Rayet star located in the constellation Cygnus, approximately 6,000 light-years from Earth.

Wolf-Rayet stars are extremely massive, incredibly hot stars at an advanced stage of their evolution. They shed vast amounts of material through stellar winds that can reach speeds of several thousand kilometers per second.

It is precisely this phenomenon that gives rise to the spectacular structure visible in this image.

💨 WR 134 is literally blowing its own material out into space.

Its stellar winds collide with the surrounding interstellar medium, compressing and ionizing it, and over time sculpting a massive gas bubble around the star.

The delicate blue and cyan structures visible in the center represent this shell shaped by WR 134's winds, while vast red hydrogen clouds extend all around it.

A Wolf-Rayet star does not remain in this state forever; this extremely brief phase in the life of a massive star generally precedes a spectacular end—a supernova explosion that may result in the formation of a neutron star or a black hole.

🌟 What we see here is, in a sense, the signature of a giant star's breath before its demise.

https://astrob.in/buxfgl/B/

CDK 400mm F/7 Gallifrey Optics

Eq8 R Pro

Zwo asi 6200MM

Filtre Optolong 2" RGB Ha Oiii 3nm

28 Juillet 2026

7 Août 2026

9 - 11 Août 2026

22 Août 2026

Images:

Optolong Blue 2": 15×120,″(30′)

Optolong Green 2": 14×120,″(28′)

Optolong H-Alpha 3nm 2": 107×300,″(8h 55′)

Optolong OIII 3nm 2": 200×300,″(16h 40′)

Optolong Red 2": 15×120,″(30′)

Acquisition : 27h 3′

Moon photo I took a while ago. I used a Nikon P1100. Took 35 photos of correctly exposed moon and another 35 of overexposed moon and later combined in post. I used affinity photo for this.

Settings: Manual mode, 1/250, f/7.1, ISO 100

Last night I captured 180 60-second subs of the Wizard Nebula and this was the result! I used my usual backyard rig, C8 + hyperstar f/2 + ASIAIR/533MC + EQ6, no filters used, bortle 9 area in SoCal.

1h57min on Dwarf Mini

Taken over multiple nights using a Canon Rebel T7 and kit zoom lens at 135mm

Star adventurer 2i

Roughly 11.5 hours of total exposure in 40s subs at 800 iso, no filters from bortle 7 skies

Got a free trial of pixinsight and the RC Astro tools to stack and process this project. BlurX and NoiseX work wonders when using a budget set up like this.

Finished up and adjusted colors in GIMP.

15+hrs on Bubble nebula taken with a Celestron Edge 8, focal reducer, and an ASI 2600 Air.

Took a super crop of the bubble and processed to bring out as much detail as possible. The “colors” have taken a second seat to detail, although I’m not sure how this will translate through Reddit compressions.

The rainbow trout palette is growing on me.

30x5 min of Ha

20x5 min of OIII

20x5 min of SII

Svbony SV503 80ED w/0.8x (448mm focal length)

QHY163m camera

iOptron CEM26 mount

ZWO SHO filters

ZWO EAF

QHY OAG w/ASI120mm guide cam

Captured using NINA.

Stacked and processed in Astro Pixel Processor using the SHO 2 formula preset.

Total integration 4h (80 × 180s), Bortle 5 skies
Gear: Askar 103APO + 0.8x reducer, ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Processing: PixInsight + NoSkiesTools

~6.5 hr integration with 60s subs, ISO 1600, Bortle3 location (Nakolec 🇲🇰), f/5.6, 250mm (cropped)

Taken with Canon 77D with Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-f5.6 IS STM Lens and Star Adventurer 2i.

Stacked with DSS and processed with Siril and PS.

Scope: Askar Fra400
Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro
Mount: star adventurer 2i

Broadband: 1638 * 20 seconds subs (9 hours total)

Ha/OIII: 677 * 20 second subs (4 hours total)

Stacked and stretched on Siril.

M31 in Suzhou China
lightpollution 5

This is comet 220p/McNaught from my backyard in upstate NY. I captured this image on 8/22 in the early morning hours. I actually started the night off collecting Veil nebula data. I set an alarm for 3am but unfortunately I didn’t wake up till nearly 4. By the time I got slewed to this i only ended up with around a half hour before the fog rolled in super thick and put an end to my session.
I captured this data with a Redcat 51 and 183.mc pro. I had those on my Celestron avx. I used DSS to stack and Pixinsight to process.

Finally had clear skies to test out my setup.

I had switched from canon to Sony cameras several years ago so I have several canon bodies gathering dust and worth nothing so I figure it won’t hurt to astro modify it myself.

Camera - Canon T6i. DIY Astro modded following YouTube video for a different t canon camera. Nerve wracking but in hindsight, not really that hard.

Lens is sigma 150-600mm. I tested at 150 and at 600mm.

I added an SVbony SV220 3nm dual narrowband filter (like optioning L-ultimate) mounted on a 3d printed filter holder mounted between lens and body (like those clip on astronomik filters). I also made one for a UV/IR cut filter for use with galaxies.

Mount is Skywatcher Star Adventurer gti on skywatcher tripod

Guiding is ASI120mm camera + SV165 scope mounted on top of camera hotshoe

Controller is ASIAIR plus

Whole setup is powered by a single NP-F970 battery. All night session used only half the capacity. Battery is rated at 10500mah 75.6WHr. Somehow the rating is different from phone chargers which are based on 3.6v. The NP battery rating is based on 7.2v

What surprised me with the setup is the guiding error is about 1.5 arcseconds and at times less than 1. I have only tested up to 3 minute exposure. Don’t have patience to try 5 minutes.

At many points I wasn’t sure if this project would succeed but I’m glad it did and got something usable out of it.

Took this at Newport State Park Beach in Door County Wisconsin on a family trip I went on recently.

Let me know if you guys think the Lightroom ai denoise is too strong I didn’t like it at the 50 standard so I kicked it down to 30 and feel like it did an amazing job!

Sony A7R3 w/ Tamron 28-200mm (28mm, iso 25600, f2.8, 4 second exposure)

Capture Details:

• 6 Panel Mosaic
• Total Integration: 13.2 Hours (Across all tiles and filters)
• ~2.2 hours/tile
• HII: 7.4 Hours (223 x 120s)
• OIII: 5.8 Hours (174 x 120s)

Equipment Details:

• Main Camera: ZWO ASI183MM Pro
• Telescope: WO Zenithstar 73
• Mount: SA GTI Equatorial
• Guide Scope: Svbony 50mm
• Guide Camera: ZWO ASI120MM
• ZWO EFW
• Filters: ZWO 7nm HII, OIII
• Custom Autofocuser

Software:

• Captured via Ekos/Kstars on an M1 Mac
• Processed in Pixinsight and Darktable

Processing:

Pixinsight: For each channel (HII, OIII), register and combine mosaic tiles --> starnet2 --> histogram adjustment --> combine into RGB --> curves adjustment, multiscale transform --> add stars --> export to Darktable --> noise reduction, tone equalizer.

Cygnus Loop Info:

The Cygnus Loop is a supernova remnant that is roughly 1000-2000 light years from us. The supernova occurred around 20,000 years ago, and we can observe what is left behind as The Cygnus Loop. Within the overall structure are The Eastern Veil (6992, NGC 6995, and IC 1340) and Western Veil (NGC 6960), in addition to a few other smaller structures.

Overall:

This is my first attempt at a mosaic, and I have learned that my computer can BARELY handle an image that is effectively 100MP, on top of all the data that comes with stacking. Pixinsight crashed several times, and while I could (and probably should) get more data per tile, the size and scope of this project has been overwhelming me, so I have decided to call it where it is.

All of the images were captured over the course of a few weeks in late July - early August, with varying moon brightness and seeing conditions. This was also the first real test of my handmade autofocuser, which while cool, also led to a huge learning curve and a lot of time spent quashing bugs. Now that everything works, I feel much more confident setting things up and taking things down quickly and efficiently. The clouds have set in where I live, but I am hopeful that I'll get another shot at a late summer target before fall and winter arrive, weather (and personal time) permitting.

Also, side note, I don't have RGB filters and I am in desperate need of them for stars, as my current stars always turn out a little funky when they're pulled from any SHO data.

Enjoy :)

This image was my first attempt at a mosaic with the ASIAIR, encompassing 6 panels, 45 minutes integration time each, 90 30-second exposures per panel. No filters used, captured at f/2 with my C8 which lands around 429mm, EQ6-R pro, ASI533MC pro + ASIAIR, hyperstar, in my bortle 9 backyard in SoCal during a 98% moon on 8/30/2026.

Processing was intense - my first mosaic capture with 6 individually stacked panels was a lot to wrangle, luckily I was guided by the fantastic Peter Zelinka using this helpful tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBX1pMkrlLY

Also dropping a snapshot of the mosaic grid - 30% overlap used -
https://imgur.com/a/sWy54ST

Next mosaic, I will fight for my life to limit the panels because 6 individually stacked photos was a lot to manage 😵

Acquisition:

Around 5.5 hours worth of 180s subs fully calibrated and dithered.

Equipment:

Evostar 72ED, iEXOS 100, ASI 533MC, Optolong L-Ultimate, 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:

-Drizzle preprocessing and stacking in Siril;

-Background extraction in GraXpert;

-SPCC in Siril;

-Deconvolution in Siril;

-Denoise in GraXpert;

-Extract HII and OIII data in Siril and generate HOO image;

-Background normalization;

-GHS and black point adjustments;

-Final denoising in GraXpert.

I’ve discovered Astro Wizard and rc Astro for the first time, decided to edit some of my bortle 9 pictures I’ve taken. Askar 103 APO, ZWO 2600 MC, L extreme filter. It’s been a while so I’ve actually forgotten how many shots I took for stacking but they’re always 120s with subpar guidance.

​

Canon EOS M6 Mark II, unmodified

Sigma 56mm f/1.4 DC DN

56mm, f/1.4

ISO 3200

2322 × 3.2s exposures

Total integration: 2h 03m

Fixed tripod, completely untracked

Approx. Bortle 4

Captured over two nights

Darks + bias, no flats

Processing:

Processed in PixInsight using WBPP with Local Normalization, PSF Signal Weighting and Winsorized Sigma Clipping, followed by a 2× drizzle integration. After cropping, I removed the gradients with GraXpert and calibrated the colors with SPCC. BlurXTerminator was applied while the image was still linear, followed by StarXTerminator to separate the stars from the nebula. NoiseXTerminator was then applied to the linear starless image before stretching. The stars and starless image were stretched separately, with additional contrast and saturation adjustments on the nebula, followed by star reduction, recombination and a few final color/background tweaks.

Heart Nebula is IC 1805, with the Soul Nebula (IC 1848) above it in the frame.

My interpretation of NGC 6960 - The West Veil of Cygnus or Witches Broom. Imaged in Beverley, Yorkshire, UK 17 Jul 2026. A little under 3 hours total integration. I plan on adding more to this when I get the chance. Full resolution image and integration details here.

Altair 80ED Triplet APO w/ 0.8x reducer
HEQ5 Pro mount
SV260 multiband pass filter
Guiding w/ 50mm + ASI120MM
AsiAir control

55 x 120-second exposures 30 darks, 30 flats, 30 biases

Stack and process in Pixinsight & DarkTable

​

My latest image of the Cocoon Nebula, IC 5146, surrounded by the huge amount of dark interstellar dust running through this part of Cygnus.

I wanted to capture more than just the bright Cocoon itself, so the processing was aimed at bringing out the much fainter dusty structure and dark nebula surrounding it while still retaining the dense background star field.

**Equipment**

• Askar 107PHQ + 0.7× reducer (~524mm, f/4.9)

• ZWO ASI2600 Duo

• Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro

• Optolong L-eNhance

• UV/IR-cut filter

• PHD2 guiding

**Light frames**

• UV/IR: 29 × 120s = 58 minutes

• L-eNhance: 46 × 240s = 3h 04m

• Total light integration: **4h 02m**

**Calibration**

• 30 × 120s darks for the UV/IR data

• 30 × 240s darks for the L-eNhance data

• 50 flats per filter

• 50 dark-flats per filter

The UV/IR and L-eNhance data were calibrated and stacked separately. The broadband UV/IR data provided most of the natural star field and faint dusty structure, while the L-eNhance data was used to strengthen the Hα/OIII emission from the Cocoon.

Processing involved gradient/background correction, noise reduction, separate star and starless processing, stretching and then combining the two filter datasets. A fair bit of care was needed with the stretch because pushing the background too far very quickly makes the faint dust overly contrasty.

The part I particularly like is the dark nebula itself. The Cocoon is obviously the bright centrepiece, but once the surrounding dust starts appearing you realise just how much structure there is across the entire field.

**IC 5146 – Cocoon Nebula, Cygnus**

**Total integration: 4h 02m**

Bortle 9
90x120s guided exposures
10 each Darks, Flats, Bias
Processed in Siril with free SyQon and Veralux scripts
Camera is Canon T6i diy astro modified
Lens is Sigma 150-600mm
SV220 3nm dual narrowband filter mounted on 3d printed filter holder
Skywatcher SA gti mount
ASI120mm+SV165 guide scope
ASIAIR plus controller
Powered by NP-F970 battery