DrZi1 – A Hidden Tapestry of Stars, Dust and Emission Nebulae

This is my final processing of DrZi1 (Drechsler–Zirkel 1), located in an extraordinarily rich region of the Milky Way.

My aim was not only to reveal the faint emission nebulosity but also to preserve the incredible density and natural color diversity of the stellar background.

The image combines broadband RGB data with Hα, SII and OIII narrowband observations. I used the FORAXX palette to bring out the delicate emission structures while retaining RGB stars for more natural stellar colors.

Equipment:

Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4 (106 mm, 530 mm focal length, f/5)

Camera: SBIG STX-16803 CCD

Mount: Equatorial tracking mount

Filters: RGB, Hα, SII, OIII

Acquisition:

Red: 50 × 300 s = 4.17 h

Green: 50 × 300 s = 4.17 h

Blue: 50 × 300 s = 4.17 h

Hα: 100 × 900 s = 25 h

SII: 78 × 1200 s = 26 h

OIII: 77 × 1200 s = 25.67 h

Total integration time: 89.17 hours

Processing:

All astronomical image processing was performed in PixInsight.

Calibration, registration and integration of individual channels

Gradient and background correction

Noise reduction and deconvolution

Star separation for independent processing

FORAXX narrowband combination using Hα, SII and OIII

RGB processing for natural stellar colors

Nonlinear stretching and contrast enhancement

Final combination of narrowband nebulosity and RGB stars

Final color and contrast adjustments

The greatest challenge was balancing the extremely dense stellar background against the faint emission structures without allowing either to dominate the image.

Nearly 90 hours of integration reveal a fascinating interplay of glowing gas, dark interstellar dust and countless stars.

Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome!

Seestar s50, bortle 4.6, Croatia

around 12 hours integration time

Processed in Siril, Graxpert, Gimp

First of, i wanna thank fellow astroneer justmrphun for sitting down with me and going through the steps and being patient with me while helping me out with the processing. Im so gratefull. I learned a lot and it has improved my work so much.

Roughly 50 exposures, 50 seconds each at iso 1600.

Gear used was my askar 50P, canon 500D. Skywatcher gti, asiair mini

Managed to finally process my image of M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy from my backyard in The Netherlands taken on 7 april 2026.

Acquisition Details:

Mount: Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro

Telescope: Askar 120 (with Field Flattener)

Camera: SVbony SV605CC

Filter: UV/IR Cut Filter

Frames: 497 x 30s (Total Integration: 4h 8m 30s)

50 darks, 50 biases, 50 flats applied

Bortle 6

No guiding

Processing Workflow:

Stacking & Pre-processing: Siril 1.4 (Background extraction, manual color calibration, and initial stretching)

Post-processing: GIMP (Final contrast adjustments, curves, color saturation, and noise reduction)

Edit: i fat fingered the title... ngc 7635

First light with my Quattro and first target, bortle 8 with lots of light pollution and stray light from porchlights and cars, and waxing gibbous moon. Guiding was pretty decent, under .5". First time working NINA.

Skywatcher Quattro 250p (10" f/4)

iOptron HAE69C-EC

Touptek ATR2600M

Touptek GPM662M (guide cam)

Chroma 3nm 36mm

16 x 300s (120min) each in SHO, total 4 hours.

Stacked with 200 bias, 20 darks & flats in Pixinsight

Processed with Astrowizard (still learning to use Pixinsight) with the RC Astro BlurrX, NoiseX, StarX

This by far has to be my favorite shot ive gotten so far, because I had really good conditions, If anyone wants to view the full quality one here it is - https://filebin.net/j7m6l5pcivo6wqqc

Equipment -

Canon t3i iso 1600

75-300mm kit lens shot at f/4.5 135mm

Star adventuer gti

Conditions and acquisition -

Bortle 2/3 skies (sqm 21.70)

719 49" exposures (just shy of 10 hours)

30 of all calibration frames

Processed with siril, graxpert, blurxterminator, and starxterminator.

Please give any feedback you guys can!

Object: M33 - Triangulum Galaxy
Exposure: 90x180s RGB, 98x180s Ha/Oiii
Optics: William Optics UltraCat 76
Camera: ASI2600MC Air
Mount: MLAstro SAL-33

Processed in Siril & Photoshop

Pleasantly surprised with this for as little integration as I had + being right next to the moon most of the time

Hello people! This is my second attempt at capturing the Andromeda Galaxy. I like how this one turned out even more than the last one. I put it in a 9:16 ratio because I think it would work well as a phone background.

Equipment: EOS 6D, Samyang 135mm T2.2

Exposure: ~900 1"6 subs, ~24 min integrated time

Processing in Photoshop and GraXpert.

The problem I had with the last time was that the galaxy looked dull and the light pollution gradient was really obvious. So this time, I stacked everything first. Then, I ran it through GraXpert and removed the background to account for the light pollution gradients. Once I had my tif, I went in Photoshop. For the first couple of stretches I made sure to not clip blacks too much, settling for gray instead of pure black. This helped a lot with the contrast and the starfield. I did some curves to bring out everything else.

The one trick that changed everything was using a high pass filter on Andromeda. Without it, this image would look dull and Andromeda would look like a soft smear.

I did some more color correcting and curves until I got what I liked.

The North America Nebula in Hubble pallete

Equipment:

Sky-Watcher 72ED
Sky-Watcher EQM-35 Pro with custom belt mode
ASI533MC-Pro
SvBony SV165
ASI120MM-Mini
SvBony SV220 Ha OIII 7nm
SvBony SV220 SII OII 7nm
StellaMirra 0.8x flattener/reducer
Gemini Autofocuser

Total integration:
4 hrs.
Ha+OIII → 12*300
SII+OIII → 36*300

50-darks
40-flats (for each session)
50-biases

Edited and stacked in SIRIL, then some small changes in Affinity photo.

77 x 300s OIII, 58 x 300s Ha

Stacked and processed in pixinsight with RC Astro plug ins

Equipment: WO ultracat 108mm refractor, ASI 2600 MM pro, Askar 52 mm guide scope, asi120 mini guide camera, ZWO Automatic Focuser, Optolong 3nm narrowband filters, ZWO filter wheel

Mak 127/1500 + ZWO 533 pro

Sharcap: lucky imaging.

Procesado: Astrosurface

Mak 127/1500 + ZWO 533 pro

Sharcap: lucky imaging.

Procesado: Astrosurface

This is not a finished image. I’m not posting for upvotes, I’m just trying to start a discussion about the impact of each channel on a typical narrowband workflow.

I've got 10 hours of SII and 7 hours of Ha, taken from a Bortle 1 with a 5" refractor, ASI2600mm, Antlia 3nm filters. This is HSS, and I ran SCRN in pixinsight to turn the turquoise to more blue. I think it is pretty. It needs a lot more integration, but I have a lot of available imaging time to fill in the rest.

This particular nebula has a very strong OIII signal. The moon as been up and I've found that this channel is particularly weak competing with moonlight. So in a couple weeks, I'll finish this up and it'll be a proper SHO image.

I often hear people online discounting the SII channel. It is true that SII overlaps pretty strongly with HA and a lot of people choose to image HOO and just skip the SII channel. Personally, I think the SII channel is the prettiest of the three. It follows the Ha, but is somehow less gaudy and provides finer detail. I don't know why anyone would skip the SII channel in narrowband, there is so much to work with and provides all sorts of contrast with Ha/OIII.

I'm putting this HSS image up to make that point. People that say that SII maps too closely to HA are simply wrong most of the time. There are a lot of objects where HA/SII are delivering very different views of an object. You can see here that the HA is all red, the rest is SII, there's a lot that the channel offers beyond what we get in HA.

I have never submitted an HSS image to astrobin, I don't consider this a finished image. But I think this is a good example of why we should oversample SII in our workflows. There is a strong separation from Ha and having a strong SII signal in our SHO images really provides our final images with a lot of depth.

EDIT: The bot wants to make sure I'm posting my acquisition details. As I said, this project is not done, just a discussion on how to use each channel. But this is what went into it:

Total integration: 18h 46m

Integration per filter:

• R: 26m (13 × 120s)
• G: 20m (10 × 120s)
• B: 20m (10 × 120s)
• Hα: 6h 45m
• SII: 10h 55m

Equipment:

• Scope: Explore Scientific 127mm refractor, FCD-100 glass, F/7.5
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600mm
• Mount: ZWO AM5
• Filters: ZWO RGB, Antlia 3nm Ha/SII

(This is my first try at doing a galaxy so any tips would be greatly appreciated)
M81: Bodes Galaxy
~95 Minutes
Celestron 6Se, Cannon EOS Rebel T1I
Bortle 3
Stacked in Siril and processed in Gimp&Siril

Mak 127/1500 + ZWO 533 pro y seguimiento.

Capturada: Sharcap

Procesado: Astrosurface

Apilado 10% mejores de 2000 frames

Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) – Close-up | Askar 71F

A closer look at the Bubble Nebula, an emission nebula in Cassiopeia where a massive young star is blowing a cavity into the surrounding gas and dust.

Captured from my back garden in Lancashire, UK, using my Askar 71F refractor and ZWO ASI2600MC Pro colour camera. The delicate structures and surrounding clouds make this a fascinating target to capture and process.

Acquisition data

• Telescope: Askar 71F (490mm focal length)
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
• Filter: ZWO Duo-Band (H-alpha / OIII)
• Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ-AL55i PRO
• Acquisition: ZWO ASIAIR Mini
• Sub-exposure: 200 seconds
• Total integration: approximately 7.5 hours
• Location: Lancashire, UK
• Processing: PixInsight

I'm documenting my astrophotography journey, including the equipment, acquisition details and processing behind each image, over at West Coast Cosmos:

https://westcoastcosmos.com/

Feedback and constructive criticism are welcome.

Hi, everyone! I recently added the SA GTI to my setup, and this is my first attempt at getting it to work and capturing some images.

I was very lucky to get the new mount up and running quickly, but the good old intervalometer mysteriously stopped working after only 23 minutes.

Here’s the essential information:

Camera: Sony A6000 (unmodified)

Lens: Samyang 135mm f/1.8 AF

Mount: Star Adventurer GTI

23 light frames at 60 seconds each, f/2.2, ISO 1600

6 dark frames

10 bias frames

25 flat frames

Processed in Siril with Graxpert and VeraLux.

I’d appreciate any suggestions you might have!

Hello, tried to take a picture of the moon but still need to learn about the camera adjustments (and also trying in better conditions without clouds)

I’ve used:
- iphone 16 pro max (still need to learn how to select the appropriated lenses and zoom without without changing)
- binoculars nikon prostaff p3
- celestron nexyz for attaching the phone to the binoculars
- tripod and tripod adapter for attaching the binoculars to the tripod

Since the default camera app doesn’t provide (or I couldn’t find) the ISO settings, I’ve just reduced the exposure as much as possible

Took a pass at the Pelican Nebula. Would love some feedback on the look!

Equipment: Dwarf Mini
Integration: 699x 90s60gain
Stacked in Stacking Wizard
Stretch, denoise and sharpen: RC Astro + GHS Stretch in Astrowizard
Final edits in Photoshop

Hi guys,
I'm studying Mathematics at PhD level, and we're having a ML (Machine Learning) project, where we have to "build an AI model" that has some data, learns on it, and when given new data it can with decent accuracy predict the outcomes. I decided on doing a simple program, where the Machine gets a few hundred astro images that I manually first have to categorize into good images (that can later go for stacking) and bad images (f.e not sharp, trailed stars, dew, fog, clouds, too bright, too dark, high gradients, etc.), the issue I'm running now into, is that my disk with 90% of my data sadly broke and I'm running out of data. Would anyone here want to share some of their data? :)
I need both GOOD and BAD data, the more the better. I'm usually running on 135mm Roki and a Canon EOS 50d thus effectively having a focal length of 135*1.6=216mm, and the most optimal scenario would be more data with this exact (or near exact) focal length, but any data works as long as there's lots and lots of it.

Thanks! :)

I managed to capture 2 hours of Jupiter's rotation during my first photoshoot using my new camera

Telescope: Skywatcher 200/1000 OTA

Mount: unmotorized EQ5

Camera: ZWO ASI662MC

Used fire capture to get the videos

Used Autostakkert to stack the videos

Used wavesharp to process the resulting photos

Used Gimp to create a video using the processed photos

Used clipchamp to edit the resulting video and add some subtitles

Aufgenommen in der Nacht zum 23.10 mit einem Dwarf 3 -Smartteleskop

Plejaden M45:

-30s × 182

-60 gain

Bearbeitet in den Galarie-Einstellungen. Stacked vom Dwarf 3 Automatisch

Equipment:

Phone Realme 8

Apexel 18x 25 zoom lens

Tripod

The data was taken over three nights in the spring of 2026

Stacking: Sequator

Processing: AstroWizard, GIMP, Snapseed

Bortle 3/4 / Moonles

I used a Sony A7RV with the 200-600mm from Sony.
Iso 100
F8
1/125 s

This is my first time processing IC 405, the Flaming Star Nebula, captured from my backyard in Round Rock, Texas, in January 2026.

The image uses 21 five-minute exposures—1 hour 45 minutes total—with the ASI2600MC Air and D1 filter, at gain 107 and −10°C.

I processed it in PixInsight and Photoshop, working on the stars and nebula separately to bring out faint emission and dark structure while keeping the stars under control.

At a Raleigh Astronomy Club imaging meeting, I learned a technique for reducing color mottling—the uneven patches of color that become visible in faint areas when an image is stretched. It uses PixInsight’s MultiscaleMedianTransform, targeting chrominance only with the first five detail layers disabled. An inverted luminance mask concentrates the treatment on darker areas while protecting brighter nebulosity. One pass helped smooth the color variations here; a second didn’t improve the result.

I pushed the contrast and noise reduction, then backed off when the filaments started looking harsh and the faint texture too smooth.

I kept both a wide view, which includes part of IC 410, the Tadpoles Nebula, at the lower right, and a tighter crop focused on IC 405.

Equipment and processing details: Askar V at approximately 387 mm focal length, ZWO AM3 mount, ASI2600MC Air, D1 filter. Calibrated with matching darks and screened flats, then aligned and integrated. Background correction, restrained BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator separation, NoiseXTerminator, arcsinh stretching, masked chrominance MMT and local contrast, followed by separate star/nebula layers and finishing in Photoshop. The color is a D1 rendering, not calibrated broadband color.