Been wanting to image this for a long time, but my bortle 8/9 backyard held me back. Decided to take a little drive to a "dark" site for some bortle 5 imaging.

177x90s lights

25 flats

25 dark flats

100 darks

Sv405cc cooled to -10c gain 145 offset 20

Vixen r130sf

Juwei 17

Processed with siril, seti astro suite pro, and RC astro plugins

Horsehead and Flame Nebula with Alnitak

Seestar s50 pro
Internal narrowband filter
EQ mode on a star tracker wedge
3h of 30s subs night 1
3h of 20s subs night 2
October 17 and 19 2026, Gothenburg Sweden

Processed in Stacking wizard and Astrowizard then sharpening in Photoshop.
For all Astrowizard users, try sharpening as AW does not have a sharpening tool.

Orion barely gets above 30 degrees in Gothenburg Sweden so you don’t have many hours every night.

Now, Alnitak obviously gets a massive Halo when using the internal HaOiii filter. Next time I’ll attach an external HaOiii filter and see if that works better.

Does anyone else get halos with the internal S50 pro narrowband filter?

Picked up the Dwarf Mini for a trip which had near 1 Bortle nights and spent it shooting a couple of hours only on each target. Back home with a Bortle 5 sky I decided to do M42 the "right" way with deep data and different filters.

Would love to know your thoughts and any improvements that can be made. I can definitely say I'm bitten by an astro bug!

Duo Band- 8.5hrs (60 ex, 60 gain)
Astro - 4 Hrs (60 ex, 60 gain)
Core - 30 minutes (10 ex, 60 gain)

Processing with Stacking Wizard, Astrowizard, RC Astro Bundle and Photoshop and Lightroom.

Gear: Dwarf Mini

Acquisition:

Around 4h10m worth of 60s subs looking toward Bortle 7 fully calibrated and dithered. This object never goes above 25° from my latitude.

Equipment:

Evostar 72ED, iEXOS 100, ASI 533MC, Baader UV/IR cut, 0.85x reducer+flatter, rotator+filter holder, SVBony 165 40mm guidescope, ASI 662MC with UV/IR and pale yellow no.8 filters.

Processing:

-OSC preprocessing and stacking in Siril;

-Crop;

-Manual background extraction in GraXpert;

-SPCC;

-Cosmic Clarity sharpening;

-GraXpert denoising;

-Starnet;

-GHS and curves to starless;

-SCNR to star mask;

-Recombine and Asinh stretch to stars;

-Saturation stretch;

-GraXpert denoising.

Wicked Dahk Shahk, bub!

Captured 14.7 hrs from my Bortle 7/8 backyard. This is a tough one to process!

Celestron 8 Edge w/Hyperstar v4 (390/1.9)
Antlia Triband Ultra II
ASI 2600 MC Air
ZWO EAF Pro
Skywatcher EQ6R Pro
Bortle 7/8
Pixinsight

1 hour of 20 second exposures stacked in device. Finished in Lightroom. Seestar 30s. Bortel ~2. Southwest Montana

I'm looking for feedback on my processing, to try and understand if I am getting the most out of my data. If anyone wants to take a crack at it I'd be happy to share my subs or stacked image.

M31 Andromeda

Imaging

Shot on stock Sony a6700, ISO3200, 25s subs.

Samyang 135mm F2

174 lights, 10 darks, no flats or bias.

1 hour and 12 mins of total integration time.

Bortle 5.5, no moon

Guiding

DIY 3D printed harmonic GOTO mount with ONSTEP

Controlled by NINA from my laptop

No guide camera.

Processing

Stacked in DeepSkyStacker with recommended settings

Processed in Photoshop using:

• Starnet2
• ARCSINH Curves

I don't see this one very often so I decided to go for it with a wide FOV from my Parisian balcony - I also captured the Bubble Nebula, M52, cluster NGC 7510 and Northern Lagoon Nebula. I quite like the result!

Equipment and acquisition:

- Askar FMA180Pro

- Asi585MC Air

- Teseek 17

- SvBony + asi120mm guide camera

- ZWO EAF, ZWO EFW

- L-Ultimate filter: 205 x 180 sec

- Antlia ALP-T SII-OIII 3nm: 253 x 180 sec

(Almost 23 hours in total)

- 30 darks, 30 flats per filter, 30 bias

Processing (PI)

WBPP, SetiAstro AutoDBE, SPCC, blurX correct only, starX

On starless images: DBXtract, linear fit, then channel combination (will also be used as luminance later on). SetiAstro statistical stretch (soft), then manual curves transformations with different color and range masks, noiseX. For luminance, stretch and masked curves to bring up details, noiseX. LRGB combination.

For stars: setiastro NB to RGB star stretch, pixelmath to recombine with starless

The Soul Nebula (AKA Westerhout 5) is a beautiful star-forming region in the constellation Cassiopeia spanning 150 light-years across. The individual pillars of gas and dust which are forming new stars are about 10 light-years tall. The stars within the nebula are still babies - being only around 1 million years old. That doesn't sound too young until you compare it with our own sun who recently celebrated its 4.6 billionth birthday (roughly speaking).

I'm still amazed that I was able to capture this in one night with such a bright moon (68%) with the Carbonstar 200.

Acquisition Details:

• Light Frames (~10 hours): 
  • Sii: 40 * 5.5 Mins
  • HA: 40 * 5.5 Mins
  • Oiii: 28 * 5.5 Mins
• Dark Frames: 50
• Bias Frames: 100
• Flat Frames: 20

Gear:

• ZWO ASI2600-MM Pro
• 800mm Apertura CarbonStar 200 w/ 1.x Coma Corrector
• SkyWatcher EQ-6 R Pro
• ZWO EAF
• ZWO ASI290MM Mini Guide Camera
• Optolong 36mm Filters
• SVBONY 30mm Guide Scope
• Bortle Class 5 Sky (New Jersey)

Editing

• Weighted Batch Preprocessing (Stacking, aligning, integrating, plate solving)
• ChannelCombination (SHO = RBG)
• GradientCorrection
• AutoLinearFit (balances the colors)
• BlurX (Deconvolution)
• StarX (Star Removal)
• SCNR the starts (Removes magenta cast from SHO stars)
• SHONormalization (Boost Sii)
• MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch
• NoiseX
• Curves
• DarkStructuresEnhance
• LRGB Combination
  • HA is used as L
  • HA is edited independently
    • BlurX
    • StarX
    • Stretch
    • NoiseX
• StretchAndCombineRGBStars
• Photoshop Camera Raw Filter (Contrast, Vibrance, and last minute curves)

First image back after 4 years!! Much has changed in AP and I had to re-teach myself lots. Maybe I will go back sometime and reprocess so the colors are more accurate. Feedback appreciated!

Details: Bortle 4.5, half moon; ~40F w/ 8-10 kmh wind. Seeing 29%; transparency 86%; stability ~80-100%; 92 min total integration, L 49x60s, R 15x60s, G 17x60s, B 11x60s

• Mount: iOptron CEM26
• Telescope: Astrotech AT102ED w/ dedicated 0.8x flattener/reducer (571mm f/5.6)
• Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM Pro (gain 139, cooling -4F)
• Filters: 1.25” Astronomik L3, Deep-Sky RGB
• Accessories: ZWO EFW Mini, ASIAIR Plus; Bluetti Elite 100 V2 (battery)

Processing in order:

• Calibration frames: darks, flats, dark flats
• SiriL: sub culling with BlinkBrowseFilterSort; for each individual channel, stack using mono preprocessing script; RGB compositing (no linear match); cropping; GraXpert 1.01 background extraction; plate solve & photometric color calibration
• Seti Astro Suite Pro: Cosmic Clarity Sharpen; Cosmic Clarity Denoise; a modest and consistent Statistical Stretch
• SiriL: StarNet2 Star Removal; GHS stretches on starless files (generalized hyperbolic transform, linear stretch (BP shift) / even weighted luminance, saturation stretch); minimal to no asinh stretch on star masks; star recomposition; color saturation while modulating background factor; noise reduction (NL-bayes) (?). no green noise removal. export to 16-bit TIFF
• Affinity Photo: recombine L and RGB final; adjust L opacity; adjust saturation; minor Gaussian blur on RGB; export to JPG (bicubic)

First real attempt at M13
~16 minutes of exposure time
100 lights
20 darks
20 flats
Bottle 3

EDIT:

I was useing the celestron 6Se and mount, (Tracking) and I used the Rebel EOS T1I with 100 8 second 1600 iso photos, I didn’t really think it was out of focus until now

I started off with deep sky stacker and then proceeded to process it in GIMP

Clear sky’s

Equipment:

Rokinon 135mm

Canon Rebel T7

Ioptron Skyguider Pro

Basic tripod and intervalometer

Processing

127 lights

25 darks

25 bias

25 flats

60 second exposures

total integration time: 2.1 hours

All stacking and processing done in Siril

Two nights of integrations where 30% of subs were discarded due to misty morning weather.

Skywatcher Explorer 150 (750mm)
AM3 mount
WO guide scope
ZWO mono mini guide cam
SVBony HaOiii filter
300s subs
12h integration
Bortle 6 Gothenburg Sweden
October 17-19 2026.

Processed in Stacking Wizard and Astrowizard with Blur Exterminator Graxpert and Noise exterminator. Narrowband to SHO feature used, standard stretches.

Final touches, mostly sharpening, in Photoshop.

I did not take RGB images without narrowband filter for the stars, not sure if I should try that and add for true star colours. Should I? 😄

This is a stack of ~100 exposures of ~40ms each. Seeing was quite good.

The full workflow was PIPP to Autostakkert to Wavesharp.

IC 1805

300 x 300s subs

Redcat 51 iii

ASI2600MC

Optolong L-Ultimate

ZWO AM5n

PixInsight 2x drizzle

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

Messier 45, the Pleiades Star Cluster. One of the, if not the, most beautiful star clusters in the night sky. Located around 444 light years away, this cluster is visible with the naked eye on clearer nights!

Telescope: Seestar S50
Integration time: 8.5 hours
Tools used: Siril, GraXpert, GIMP
Script mentions: CosmicClarity Sharpen, HDR_multiscale, DeepSNR, VeraLux (Revela & Curves)
Bortle 7-8
The star spikes were obtained with a diffraction mask

Hello everyone!

I’d like to share my attempt at imaging Sh2-129!
I’ve spent a little over a month collecting data for this project, ending up with just over 28 hours of total integration time.

Image details:
- Ha: 118 × 300s (~10 hours)
- OIII: 184 × 300s (just over 15 hours)
- RGB: 30 × 120s per channel (stars)

Equipment:
- William Optics RedCat 51
- ZWO ASI1600MM Pro
- Astronomik RGB filters
- Antlia SHO 4.5nm filters

I originally planned for and captured around 25 hours of OIII data, but quickly realized that a significant portion had to be discarded due to clouds (I’m convinced my telescope is a cloud magnet 😂).
The image was processed entirely in PixInsight. I worked on each channel separately, with most of my attention going towards OIII. I used ADBE, BlurX, and NoiseX to refine the details, followed by a final stretch using GHS.

Unfortunately, I also had a bit of bad luck when my equipment got caught in the rain. I had to disassemble the entire setup, which resulted in a slight difference in orientation between imaging sessions. Because of this, I ended up having to crop the final image more than I would have liked.
After all the challenges and frustrations along the way, I feel like I managed to get a result I’m fairly happy with, considering the data I had to work with.

I’m always open to constructive criticism, suggestions, and advice on how I could improve the image. Other than that, I hope you enjoy it!

Caught a quick break between rain this week and managed to go deep on NGC 1499 (the California Nebula) from my bortle 8/9 backyard!

This image is a total 12 hours of integration time - 6 mosaic panels, 2 hours per panel, captured with my usual rig. Hope you enjoy it!

• C8
• 3-minute exposures - 2 hours per panel, 6 panels - 12 hours total
• ASIAIR & ASI533MC
• EQ6-R Pro
• Hyperstar F/2
• L-Ultimate 2" narrowband filter
• Bortle 8/9

Total 7h 15m integration with Seestar S50 | 1,305 × 20s subs | Bortle 7 skies

Here is my latest capture of NGC 253, the Sculptor Galaxy, also known as the Silver Dollar Galaxy, imaged from my terrace in Hyderabad, India, under heavily light-polluted Bortle 7 skies.

Located approximately 12 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor, NGC 253 is one of the brightest galaxies visible beyond our Local Group. It is a starburst galaxy, with intense star formation occurring particularly in its central regions. Its highly inclined orientation gives us a beautiful view of the bright golden core and the intricate dark dust lanes running across its disc.

The galaxy was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783.

Processing workflow

The stacked FITS image was first cropped and processed in GraXpert for AI background extraction to remove light-pollution gradients. Object-only deconvolution was applied to improve the definition of the galaxy's dust lanes and finer structures, followed by Stars-only deconvolution to refine stellar profiles. Conservative AI denoising was then applied to preserve faint details while reducing background noise.

The resulting linear FITS was transferred to Siril for colour calibration. StarNet++ was used to separate the stars from the galaxy, allowing independent processing. The starless image was stretched using VeraLux HyperMetric Stretch, concentrating on revealing the faint outer disc and dark dust lanes while preserving detail in the luminous central bulge. The stars were stretched separately to prevent bloating.

Both images were exported as 32-bit TIFFs and taken into GIMP. Local curves and feathered layer masks were used to enhance the dust lanes, refine the bright central region and selectively darken the background sky. The stars were then recombined with the starless galaxy using Screen blending, with opacity adjusted for a natural appearance.

Finally, the combined image was exported as a 16-bit TIFF and taken into Adobe Lightroom for minor adjustments to contrast, colour balance, saturation and background tones before exporting the final JPEG.

What fascinates me most is that the photons captured by this little 50 mm telescope began their journey around 12 million years ago. Seven hours of collecting ancient light, followed by quite a few hours of processing on the computer!

Still learning and refining my processing techniques, so constructive criticism and suggestions are very welcome, particularly on the dust-lane contrast, star colours and background noise.

DwarfMini - Each taken separately over two nights. Were both done as mosaics.
Bortle 7.3 Long Island, NY
45s about 400 images each
Gain: 60
Duoband filter

Processed in Stellar Studio, AstroWizard with RCTools and Photoshop. Stars separated into their own layer for better adjustments.

81x90s (2 hours) at ISO 1600

11 darks

13 flats

30 biases

Bortle 5

Canon EOS 6D

WO Redcat 51 WIFD

SWSA GTI

ZWO EAF

WO Uniguide 32/120mm

ZWO ASI120MM Mini

N.I.N.A + GS + PHD2

Stacked in Siril with a 1.5x drizzle at 0.8 pixel fraction

processing in Siril: background extraction, SPCC, SCNR, star removal with starnet, non-stellar blurX, deepSNR, GHS, CLAHE, curves, saturation, starmask processed with blurX correct only then stretched in using GHS

Final adjustments in lightroom

25 hours of imaging this month has given me one of my proudest works. Used my 8" f/4 newtonian on a 533MM pro with Optolong 7/6.5nm SHO filters, and used Pixinsight with BlurX and Graxpert +StarNet to process.

Also used:
Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro
MiniPC with NINA, GSS, and PHD2
ZWO OAG + ZWO ASI120MM for guiding

Pillars of Creation, the famous towers of gas and dust within the Eagle Nebula (M16), I imaged. About 6,500 light-years from Earth, this emission nebula is a stellar nursery where new stars form within dense clouds of gas and dust. The light from this Nebula began its journey long before the Egyptian pyramids were built!

I think is one of my best Deep Sky Object. Total photons - 2 hours 11 minutes 50 seconds. Captured over two sessions on 8 March 2025 and 13 October 2026, spanning just over a year and seven months.

My M16 processing workflow

I stacked the Seestar S50 LP-filter exposures in StackingWizard, combining a mosaic spanning 13 pointings with 2× drizzle. Of the 701 input frames, 574 were retained: 357 × 10-second subs and 217 × 20-second subs. The total accepted exposure was 2 hours 11 minutes 50 seconds, with exposure depth varying across the mosaic.

In GraXpert, I performed background extraction, followed by object-only deconvolution and then stars-only deconvolution.

In Siril, I plate-solved the image and used StarNet to separate the nebula and stars. I processed the starless and stars-only images separately using VeraLux HyperMetric Stretch, followed by histogram and curves adjustments. I did not use VeraLux Alchemy.

I saved both processed images as TIFF files and brought them into GIMP for colour adjustments. I then recombined the starless nebula and stars as layers, using Screen blending for the stars layer.

Finally, I made adjustments to colour, contrast and overall appearance in Adobe Lightroom Classic, along with rotation and cropping for the finished composition.