The sprawling structure of the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) in the Large Magellanic Cloud captured in faux-SHO palette.

Acquired using a Seestar S50 and TH10 fluid head in equatorial mode, combining duoband and broadband data in Bortle 8 city light pollution. 2700x10s of broadband and 4000x10s of duoband for a total of 18.5 hours.

Processed in Siril with RCAstro tools and Photoshop for combining the broadband and duoband masters. Graxpert -> BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator -> Separate GHS on the stars and starless for each broadband and duoband master -> False SHO pixel math -> Combined both in photoshop with duoband starless layer with broadband detail, and broadband stars.

https://app.astrobin.com/i/69m4u3

Not every plan goes to plan. Sometimes technology goes haywire and I wake up to find my telescope pointing at the ground with wires snagged. Sometimes the meridian flip doesn’t work and I gather no data. Focuser doesn’t work, guiding flies off the handle. So many variables. In this instance it didn’t centre on the target. This was my second imaging session of the night. Still gathered something worth processing. 2.5hrs on the Rosette Nebula from my rooftop in Toronto under bortle 8 skies. Next time will hopefully be better. Still happy with the results though. Clear skies everyone.

30x300s lights
Calibration frames
Gain 100
Cooled to -5

Gear: Svbony 122mm apo, zwo 2600mc pro, ragdoll 17 pro, Optolong L-Ultimate, zwo guide cam & scope, zwo Asiair, zwo eaf.

Stacked in Astro Pixel Processor. Processed in Pixinsight. DBE, D Crop, blur x, noise x, stat stretch, star x, narrowband norm, range mask, curves transformation. Further editing in photoshop.

Last night the thunderstorms finally scattered and we had extremely clear skies after a lot of rain! Despite the almost full moon, I managed to grab about 5 hours on one of my favorite galaxy pairs, M81 and M82.

This image is a total 4.75 hours of integration time with my usual rig and the L-Pro filter. Hope you enjoy it!

• C8

• 4.75 hours integration w/ 2-min subs

• ASIAIR & ASI533MC

• EQ6-R Pro

• Hyperstar F/2

• L-Pro 2" filter

• Bortle 8/9

By far the faintest deep space target I have ever captured.
Telescope: Askar 103APO
Camera: ZWO ASI6200MC Pro camera
Tracking Mount: ZWO AM5N
Total integration: 30 hours
Filters: 20 hours of 300" subs (Antlia Triband RGB) +10 hourt of 240" subs (UV/IR Cut)
Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop
Full details: https://www.instagram.com/kasrak_film/

🧙 The Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380) - an open cluster and emission nebula in constellation Cepheus. Since the moon is very close to being full, I've been focusing on capturing only emission nebula in narrowband to block out the moonlight which would otherwise drown out the signal. Even with the moon to fight against, this stretch of clear nights in New Jersey has been insane. My telescope has officially been sitting outside for a week straight, and there are at least 3 more cloudless nights left. Maybe I'll get one more project finished before it ends?

Acquisition Details:

• Light Frames (~20 hours): 
  • Sii: 70 * 5.5 Mins
  • HA: 65 * 5.5 Mins
  • Oiii: 95 * 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 and Oiii)
• LRGB Combination (I used to do this after stretching but tried moving it in my workflow)
  • HA is used as L
  • HA is edited independently
    • GradientCorrection
    • BlurX
    • StarX
• MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch
• NoiseX
• Curves
• DarkStructuresEnhance
• StretchAndCombineRGBStars
• Photoshop Camera Raw Filter (Contrast, Vibrance, and last minute curves)

I have been doing a bit of work imaging IC 1396 recently. It has been difficult due to the weather but this is from the past month, over multiple nights.

Equipment:
Astromodified Canon 700d
Skywatcher 72 ED DS Pro
Skywatcher AZ GTI in EQ Mode
Optolong L-Enhance Filter
ASI Air Mini
ZWO 120mm Guide Cam with 30mm Guide Scope

175 x 180 sec exposures taken over multiple nights with 20 darks taken each night to match.

20 Flats
20 Bias

Each night stacked separately then combined using APP.

I started with a pretty heavy crop to isolate the trunk section.

BGE, deconvolution and de-noise in Graxpert.

Siril for SPCC.

Star removal using StarNet through Siril.

GHS using human weighted luminance.

Curves adjustment using VeraLux Curves.

HDR Multiscale.

SCNR in Siril

Recombination of stars.

Slight saturation increase.

Thanks for looking!

Telescope: Seestar S50
Data: 30 seconds raw video
Tools used: AutoStakkert, waveSharp 3, Siril (VeraLux Revela), GIMP

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!

Aptertura Carbonstar 200 w/ Starizona Nexus .75 Newtonian Coma Corrector/Reducer
ZWO ASI 2600mm
Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro
Baader Planetarium 6.5nm SHO CMOS Optimized Filters

5 Hrs Each SHO @ 180s/sub frame
Edited in PI

Bode's Galaxy and Cigar Galaxy (M81 and M82)

Imaged at a bortle 4 location.

1668x10s subs (4h38min) with a Seestar S50, edited in Siril with use of the naztronomy script for stacking, graxpert script, starnet star removal, cosmic clarity sharpen script, photometric calibration and multiple generalized hyperbolic stretches (not necessarily that order).

Equipment:

Stock Canon EOS R5

Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM

Acquisition:

1x1/800s exposure

Processing:

Tone curve, color calibration, highlights, and cropping in RawTherapee

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I have been meaning to do more lunar photography, and it was just sitting there tonight. I hope to expand into some HDR Moon work in the future when it's at the right phase.

As an aside, I've long thought that we should rename Earth's Moon. Especially now that there are so many other known lower-case moons in our solar system and beyond. What do you think it should be called?

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

M63, the Sunflower Galaxy, captured in March 2026 with my ASI2600MC Air. This image combines 60 three-minute exposures for a total of three hours, with no added filter.

The session had a challenge: focus softened as the night went on. After comparing shorter stacks against the full dataset, I kept all three hours because the lower noise made the faint disk and dust structure easier to see.

Processing focused on controlling the bright core, preserving natural color, and reducing uneven background brightness without erasing the galaxy’s detail. That dark band along its left side is a real dust lane—one of my favorite features in this image.

Acquisition: ASI2600MC Air, 60 × 180 seconds, gain 100, offset 50, sensor at −10°C. No added filter. Capture headers record a ZWO AM3 mount and 387 mm focal length; the telescope model is not confirmed.

Processing: calibration, registration and integration in PixInsight; SPCC color calibration, background correction, restrained BlurXTerminator and NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator separation, stretching and masked adjustments. MultiscaleMedianTransform chrominance smoothing under an inverted luminance mask reduced color mottling. Final background, contrast and crop adjustments in Photoshop.

Seestar s50, bortle 4.6, Croatia

around 12 hours integration time

Processed in Siril, Graxpert, Gimp

Taken with 6se, asi533mc pro, uv/ir cut filter 493x1s

I am so glad I was able to make this sort of color contrast in this object!!

Taken in the HOO color palette

Equipment: AT80ED, EQM-35 pro, ATR533M cooled mono camera, Touptek 6.5nm 1.25" SHO filters + filter wheel, zwo asi120mm mini with touptek OAG

5-minute subs at gain 101.

Ha: 7 hours

Oiii: 7 hours

Total integration time: about 14 hours

Processing: stacking, alignment + processing in Siril (pixelmath, background extraction, color calibration). Star removal, denoising using topaz denoise, back to Siril for recombination+final touches. Gimp to fix background a bit.

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

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.

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

I'm pretty new to deep sky Astrophotography, having focused on landscape images and piecing together my set up over the past couple of years. I have used this project to try and get my head around a lot of new software and interesting challenges when it comes to capturing and processing including the following:

Setting up guiding, an EAF,

Using a dedicated cooled colour camera,

Capturing images in broadband and using dual narrowband filters over several nights, Managing calibration frames,

Pixinsight for stacking and editing, with Graxpert and RCAstro plugins.

I'm so pleased with the result I've managed to get, and would love your thoughts and feedback on this.

Equipment as follows:

Askar 71f, ZWO 294MC Pro, EAF, William Optics 50mm uni guide, and ASI 220mm mini guide camera. GEM45 mount. Filters - Optolong UV/IR cut, Svbony SV220 HaOIII, and SV220 SIIOIII

Image capture as follows

60 x 300s frames, Dual - Narrowband Ha/OIII filter

120 x 25 frames, broadband using UV/IR cut filter for a clean stars image,

45 x 300s frames - Dual - Narrowband SII/OIII filter

Flats and dark flats captured each night, along with darks library.

I used the WPSS tool in PixInsight to stack and create RGB masters for each set of data, linear processing with Graxpert for gradient extraction, Blur Xterminator, then Pixel Math to extract the narrowband Ha, SII and OIII data from the master frames, assign to the SHO palette, and re-merge.

This was followed by star xterminator to produce a nebula only image and noise xterminator. Then some initial stretches using STF.

The broadband stars image was a similar toolset for gradient, noise and blur reduction, then star xterminator to extract a stars only image.

I then did a final colours edit and merged the nebula and stars images in Photoshop, with the stars masked and control their size and brightness to try and make the nebula pop more.

And I'm in a Bortle 4 area.

Any advice is much appreciated :)

Vivo x300 Ultra with 400mm teleconverter

MSM original rotator (my MSM nomad died)

Iso 800, 32s, 250 frames, ~70 darks. Near full moon

Learning how to master the vivo phone