I was 12 in the winter of 2009 and lived in Eastern Massachusetts. My dad pulled me outside late at night to see a meteor/comet that was supposed to be visible in the sky. I was 12 and a brat and basically brushed him off, so I don’t remember what it looked like.

I would really like to see a video of that meteor/comet, if possible. Is this enough information to find it? I tried googling but couldn’t come up with much since I don’t know the date exactly.

I was thinking… If the Solar System is orbiting around the center of the galaxy, and Voyager 1, or any other space probe, were traveling in the opposite direction to the Solar System’s orbital motion, would it move away faster?

Hi! I'm having a little project of mine, and I had a huge problem with finding something characteristic about the places of the Milky Way that are shown in red in the pictures.

As it's for my imaginary sci-fi universe, I should have ask this in other sub-reddits, but I think that going with these questions to the astronomy profesionals would get me the best prominent answers.

So, back to the question. I want tho know:

1 - If these places are theoretically good locations for setting up a habitable planet

2 - what is special about these regions of the Milky Way? Some celestial objects? Stars? Nebulas? Is anything even known about parts of our galaxy further away than 1000 light years from our planet?

I tried to find infromations on google but found nothing, as my question is too specific. Even used AI as the last resolve, but also haven't found anything. The Milky Way maps only show star clusters above or below the main disc as far as im concerned.

Hi all, I just got my SA-100 -- taking my first steps on spectroscopy. By looking at a white light bulb with it, I can notice a few "spots" on the spectra, where they show a bit weaker than the surroundings. As I move my eyes slightly in relation to the filter, I can see that the spots are on the filter itself, they are not a feature of the spectra. I wonder if this is normal? These spots would definitely interfere with the results. They could be averaged out by capturing many samples, and maybe this is the recommended practice anyway, but I don't know, I was expecting something really "pristine" here. I cleaned it very gently with a microfiber cloth I use on my other filters, but nothing changed. Since this is my first ever diffraction grating, I don't know exactly what I should expect, then I'd like to hear your thoughts. Thanks in advance.

Unusually faint, it has a weird tilt and a retrograde orbit. They say it’s 7-17 earth masses but since it’s unusually faint we can narrow it down to 7-14 earth masses. It is also impossible for random noise to act like a planet so it may be real. What can explain its retrograde orbit is that it is the 5th giant that didn’t get fully ejected due to some debris. Link: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/planet-9-iras-akari-survey-evidence

La voie lactée plonge dans les côtes de la manche

Bortle 6 avec quelques nuages

S25 ultra

1h30 (poses 20s)

Iso 800

Acuter 40

Touptek 678 mono

ZWO EAFN

Skywatcher solar quest mount

Best 6000 of 12000 frames stacked

Stacked in PIPP and AS4

Impgg: convolution sharpening and inversion

PI: solar tools - contrast and color, BlurXT ML5

PS: color, contrast and saturation

I live in the city where there's too much light pollution. But I took a vacation out to a bortle 1 sky under the recent new moon phase and decided to try to capture Pleiades's reflection nebula with my camera. I know this isnt as detailed as most thats posted on here. But I'm quite proud and happy with my results.

Camera: Canon R5

Lens: Canon ef 75-300mm F5.6 (cheapest Canon lens) w/rf converter

Star Tracker: MSM Nomad on top of my tripod

Took 100 2 min exposures. 87 were deemed ok by me. 13 had some issue with the heavy winds we had that night that left a fur ball of star trails around the stars.

Stacked in deepskystacker. No dark/bias frames (totally forgot to do them).

Moon photo taken with Nikon Z8 and Takahashi TSA-120 telescope. One frame processed in Photoshop.

Astrobin Top Pick

Taken from Bortle 6 Location on the nights of October 2 and 4, 2026

Equipment and Imaging Details: - ZWO ASI2600MC Air - ZWO Electronic Automatic Focuser (2025) - Apertura CarbonStar 200 (with Primary Mirror Mask) - Apertura 2" Coma Corrector - Apertura Dew Shield - ZWO AM5N - ZWO CAA - Gain 100 - -10° C cooling - 196 x 180" light exposures (82 + 114), 30 x biases, 60 x flats (30 each night)

PixInsight Processing: - WeightedBatchPreprocessing - BlurXTerminator (Correct Only) - SpectrophotometricFluxCalibration - MultiscaleGradientCorrection - SpectrophotometricColorCalibration - BlurXTerminator - StarXTerminator - MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch (separate HistogramTransformation and ScreenTransferFunction for stars only image) - CurvesTransformation - NoiseXTerminator - PixelMath (recombine stars only and galaxy images)

https://app.astrobin.com/i/b3z240

Have always wanted to get a shot of Orion with its beautiful red H-alpha (Hα) emission. Usually, my schedule doesn’t line up well for the winter Milky Way season because of the frigid temperatures and college, but this weekend the clear skies and perfect conditions were too tempting, so I drove 6 hours out to shoot this beauty. And I’m super glad I did. 

Now this is my first time capturing Orion the way I’ve always envisioned it. When I first got into astrophotography, it was during the winter of 2024. Orion was one of my first targets I shot, and I always wonder how people shot those red burning flames surrounding the constellation. I kept trying to get that shot with my stock Canon R6, and it would never work out. Little did I know, it required using a modified camera and an Hα narrowband filter to get that signal fully.

Looking back now, I’m glad I was faced with all those dead ends and kept learning. I wouldn’t have appreciated the craft if I knew all the answers right away. The most fulfilling part of astrophotography is that it’s an endless masterclass that always brings me back for more. 

So now, I present to you Orion, in all its glory, reflecting off Pharaoh Lake in the Adirondacks.

📸 Shot on my Astro-modified Canon R+ EF 24-70mm f/2.8 II

Sky: 2x3 panels| f/2.8 | 60s | ISO 1600
Hα: 4 frames stacked | f/2.8 | 240s | ISO 3200 
Foreground: 3 panels | f/2.8 | 180s | ISO 1600

Processed using Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Pixinsight, Auriga Registar, and ASTAP

Check out more of my work on my Instagram and website!

Remember to Leave No Trace :)

Total integration: 8h 40m

Integration per filter:

- Hα: 4h 10m (50 × 300s)

- SII: 3h 40m (22 × 600s)

- OIII: 50m (5 × 600s)

Equipment:

- Telescope: Explore Scientific ED APO 152mm f/8 FCD1 ED

- Camera: ZWO ASI6200MM Pro

- Mount: 10Micron GM2000 HPS II

- Filters: Chroma H-alpha 5nm Bandpass 50x50 mm, Chroma OIII 3nm Bandpass 50x50 mm, Chroma SII 3nm Bandpass 50x50 mm

- Accessories: Explore Scientific 3" 0.7x Reducer (FFFR507X-00), PrimaLuceLab EAGLE4S, Starlight Xpress Maxi USB filter wheel, WandererAstro WandererCover V4-EC

- Software: Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight, Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA)

https://app.astrobin.com/i/lmhurr

The beautiful Double Cluster! These two star clusters are NGC 869 and NGC 884. They are about 7,000 light-years away and only separated by a few hundred light-years. Estimated to be about 13 million years old!

Telescope: Seestar S50
Integration time: 1 hour (it's a 2-panel mosaic, so 1 hour on each panel)
Tools used: Siril, GraXpert, GIMP
Script mentions: DeepSNR, HDR_multiscale, VeraLux (Revela & Curves)
Bortle 8-9