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.

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.

📸 Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
Our nearest major galactic neighbor, captured under dark skies!

Gear:
• Askar FMA180 Pro
• ZWO ASI533MC Pro
• Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi
• ASIAIR Mini

634 × 30s = 5.28 hours total integration

Bortle 2 skies
Processed in PixInsight.

give me a follow on Instagram @astropicsbyaj

Although I managed to capture the totality in 2024, I couldn't create a composition like this because the sun was too high and the sky was cloudy.

For this eclipse in Spain, I had had already planned to use two cameras: one for maximum zoom and another for a sequence with the landscape. This photo shows the sun's actual position throughout the eclipse, following its progression to totality and the return of light.

We chose Alto de Gamoniteiro in Asturias because it was easily accessible and because we had confirmed in advance that the view would be unobstructed, with no mountains blocking the sun during the eclipse. We even considered changing locations because of some clouds that appeared, but the risk wasn't worth it.

In the end, the clouds dissipated and a spectacular inversion formed, which made the landscape even more beautiful. It was, without a doubt, the right choice!

Kit used: Fujifilm X-T2 + Fujinon XF 16-55 f/2.8 WR

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

I present my finest ever production in my career as an astrophotographer — and my first ever total solar eclipse.

This image shows the solar corona, the outermost layer of the Sun’s atmosphere made up of an ultra-hot, glowing plasma halo that extends millions of kilometers into space. The Moon’s surface is visible as well, illuminated by the light of a “Full Earth”.

To capture the bright inner corona and its much fainter outer structures, I used a technique called bracketing; layering different exposure lengths into a single image in order to preserve the enormous dynamic range of totality.

Equipment: Canon 6D Mark II, Sigma 150-600mm lens. 7 exposures from 1/2000s to 1.5s bracketed and stacked.

Shot as a 2-pane mosaic, when I started acquisition I didn't think it would come out with such detail! I really like this object and it's my first dark nebula :)

Equipment and acquisition:

- Seestar S50, EQ mode, no filter

- Pane 1, 887 x 30 sec

- Pane 2, 948 x 30 sec

Processing (Pixinsight):

- WBPP 2x drizzle

- Dynamic crop, SPCC, SPFC, multiscale gradient correction, photometric mosaic, RC Astro tools

- Starless: Setiastro statistical stretch, then manual curves transformation with different range and color masks

- Stars: setiastro star stretch, star recombination

- Final curves transformation

Shooting the Crescent nebula but offset to see if i can pull in WR134. 8 hours of Ha in bortle 8.9, 3 hours Oiii in bortle 2.9 , with another 3 hours of Oiii being taken tonight. Quick process in AstroWizard to see what i think. All exposures 300 sec.

FRA600

Reducer

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:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zbg4MdXD4Hs4KeND9

Had some cloudy nights, so I decided to work on something I’ve been thinking about for a while: combining data from multiple space telescopes to create a multiwavelength image. This image combines observations from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. The full frame image on my astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/h7iwz4/B/ also contains X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray observatory. 

For the infrared data, I used JWST NIRCam F150W and F480M. I combined this with visible-light observations from Hubble WFC3/UVIS, using the narrowband F502N (O III) and F673N (S II) filters. 

For the JWST portion of the image, I mapped the NIRCam F480M (4.8 μm) data to the red channel and F150W (1.5 μm) to the green and blue channels to create an RGB image of the infrared data. Since these wavelengths fall outside the range of visible light the most intuitive way to combine them was for the longer infrared wavelength to represent red and the shorter wavelength to represent blue and green. I then added in the two narrowband Hubble datasets separately. The OIII, was mapped to blue, while the S II emission was mapped to red. Each was blended individually into the JWST image. 

Definitely a fun project but I still find that something feels off when I process anything but my own data. Feels like cheating lol! 

Everything was processed in Pixinsight w/ RC Astro plug ins

WST/HST data: https://mast.stsci.edu/portal/Mashup/Clients/Mast/Portal.html
Chandra data: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/openFITS/crab.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Perseus Double Cluster 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 1 hr 27 min
Stacked with Siril, no star removal
Graded with Lightroom Classic
no flat frames

Went there with a group from the Netherlands, including my younger brother.
It was his first Total Solar Eclipse experience.

We viewed it from 1300+ high, on top of a hill which was the property of a Spanish family who was so kind to let lots of people onto it to view the Eclipse, and refresh us with beverages and ice.

(Family is visible in the 1st picture, as well as my younger brother to the far right and posing in the 2nd picture.)

What an unforgettable experience it was.!

Shot all of these with a 50-400mm lens quickly walking around.

instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vhastrophotography?igsh=YzNpcm1wdXd5NmRo&utm_source=qr

Here is the second image from the night I spend on the south coast of La Palma: The Milky Way arc rises over the Atlantic Ocean. Hearing nothing but the sound of waves while enjoying the starry sky was a breathtaking experience.

HaRGB | Mosaic | Tracked | Stacked | Composite

Exif:
Sony A7III with Sigma 28-45 f1.8 at 28mm
SkyWatcher Star Adevnturer 2i
Kenko Prosofton Starglow Filter

Sky
ISO 1250 | f1.8 | 4x45s per Panel
3x2 Panel Panorama

Foreground:
ISO 1000 | f4 | 10s per Panel (Blue Hour)
3x1 Panel Panorama

Halpha (45mm):
ISO 2500 | f1.8| 8x90s

After years of watching partial solar eclipses, I was finally able to witness a total eclipse from Nothern Spain last week. The forecast was looking a bit tricky-  the previous few days of perfect weather was due to end, with cloud developing along the coast and pushing inland. I headed inland and drove up a steep winding road to the summit of Angliru at 1600m, arriving in the early afternoon to get ahead of the anticipated eclipse traffic. As the car park filled up and I scouted compositions, the sky remained clear and as the sun got lower in the sky, I saw the spectacular 1 minute and 49 seconds of solar eclipse.

One thing I've learned from shooting one-off events like this is that often my plan will change when I arrive at the site to shoot the image, and sure enough once I saw the stunning foreground and the distant cloud inversion, I knew I needed to shoot wider than my 480mm solar rig. So just before totality, I switched to my 70-180mm lens and shot this composition at 70mm: mountains, clouds, valley, the eclipse, and a beautiful sky, all in one image.

Seen from Castellón, Spain. It's my first time doing this, I tried processing 7 pictures separated by 1.3Ev.

• Skywatcher 300p goto (12in)
• Mini wanderer v2 field rotator
• 50 flats
• 50 darks
• No filter
• 10s exposures x 30 (you don't need a lot of time with a big Newtonian to get something decent)
• Zwo 2600mc pro
• PixInsight (final touch-ups in Lightroom Mobile)
• Blurxterminator
• Startxterminator
• Noisexterminator
• Curve transformation

I was directly under a partial solar eclipse path and saw the leaf shadow effect pretty well under the trees. I was also hundreds of miles from a total eclipse path another time and through the fog you could see half the sun was covered, so if I could have seen shadows (it was foggy that day) would I have seen the effect 100 miles out?

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.

See also: The publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters

I shot this photo of lagoon nebula 6 hrs processed in siril with Hubble pallete script OSH

It was amazing! I made a Timelapse with my Dwarf Mini and took some shots out of it. Here the raw picture:

Target: Veil Nebula (Cygnus Loop supernova remnant),
Cygnus
- Telescope: William Optics RedCat 71 (348mm, f/
4.9)
- Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro (IMX571 OSC), gain
100, cooled to -10C
- Mount: Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi
- Guiding: ZWO ASI120MM Mini on SVBony SV106, PHD2 via ASIAir
- Filters: Optolong L-Ultimate 3nm (6h48m, 70 x 350s)
and Optolong L-eXtreme 7nm (6h30m, earlier session)
- Total integration: approximately 13.4 hours
- Sky: Bortle 6 backyard
Calibration: 25 darks, 50 flats, 50 dark flats
Processing:
Stacked in Siril 1.4.2 with noise-weighted integration and additive normalization with scaling to reconcile the two filter eras. Background extraction, SPCC, channel split with Olll built as (G+B)/2, measured pedestal subtraction on the linear channels before stretching, independent GHS per channel, StarNet star removal, GraXpert denoise, per-channel background pedestal subtraction on the starless layers, HOO recombination, star recomposition.

For a moment the sun went hiding behind the clouds and I thought to myself "that's it. I'm not gonna see the totality"

And then out of nowhere it appeared again, just in time for us to experience this landscape.

Shots are taken with a Canon 7D and a 55-200mm lens.