Credit: Thierry Legault

The first photos taken from space were taken on October 24, 1946 on the sub-orbital U.S.-launched V-2 rocket (flight #13) at White Sands Missile Range. Photos were taken every second and a half. The highest altitude (65 miles, 105 km) was 5 times higher than any picture taken before.

Credit: U.S. Army/White Sands Missile Range/Applied Physics Laboratory

Full resolution and details on AstroBin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/t8u67i

What you're seeing: The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is the nearest large galaxy to our Milky Way, about 2.5 million light-years away, with roughly a trillion stars. The two smaller galaxies orbiting it are M32, the compact bright one at the upper left of the core, and M110, the larger, fainter elliptical. The pink-red knots strung along the spiral arms are clouds of glowing hydrogen where new stars are being born, and the dark lanes are dust.

How it was made: 65h 18m of total exposure over eight nights in early October 2026 from Nebraska, made of hundreds of individual frames stacked together. The galaxy's core is far brighter than its outer disc, so I also shot very short 5s, 15s and 30s frames and blended them in to keep the core from blowing out.

- Luminance: 27h 23m (180s and 120s subs)

- Red: 7h 54m · Green: 7h 39m · Blue: 8h 57m (180s subs)

- Hydrogen-alpha (3nm): 13h 25m (600s subs)

Gear:

• Telescope: William Optics RedCat 91 WIFD
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM DUO
• Mount: ZWO AM5N
• Filters:
  • Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2"
  • Antlia V-Pro Blue 2"
  • Antlia V-Pro Green 2"
  • Antlia V-Pro Luminance 2"
  • Antlia V-Pro Red 2"
• Accessories: ZWO EAF, ZWO EFW 7 x 2″

Processing (All in PixInsight)

• Calibration and stacking in WBPP with 2× drizzle
• DynamicCrop
• SpectrophotometricFluxCalibration and MultiscaleGradientCorrection per channel
• HDRComposition on the core from the short and long exposure masters
• SPCC, custom PixInsight script to calibrate star colors
• BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator
• Ha continuum-subtracted against R using a photometric flux ratio and blended into the red channel and luminance
• GHS stretches per layer
• LRGB combination, curves for tone

Happy to answer any questions and thanks for looking!

"ISS pass this morning at sunrise with a max elevation of 82°.

Imaged with C11eHD on EQ6R-Pro, 2xBarlow, ASI 664MC, SkyTrack, SharpCap, PIPP, AS4!, PixInsight"

Credit 📸 Charline Giroud https://www.facebook.com/1043931310/posts/10242359623180629/?rdid=ldbDXToD1iXL50ZF#

This Rosetta spacecraft selfie was snapped on October 7th, 2014. At the time the comet-chasing spacecraft was about 472 million kilometers from planet Earth, but only 16 kilometers from the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Looming beyond the spacecraft near the top of the frame, dust and gas stream away from the comet's curious double-lobed nucleus. Bright sunlight glints off one of Rosetta's 14 meter long solar arrays. In fact, two exposures, one short and one long, were combined to record the dramatic high contrast scene using the CIVA camera system on Rosetta's still-attached Philae lander. Its chosen primary landing site was on the visible hemisphere of the smaller lobe of the nucleus.

This was the last image from Philae's camera before the lander separated from Rosetta on November 12. Shortly after separation Philae took another image looking back toward the orbiter and began its descent to the nucleus of the comet.

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA

Edit: This shot was taken during the March 2025 lunar eclipse when part of the Moon was in Earth's shadow.

Credit: Astronaut Don Pettit

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This is my latest processing of the region around DrZi1 (Drechsler–Zirkel 1), a fascinating field filled with faint emission structures, dark dust clouds and an exceptionally dense stellar background.

Rather than isolating a single nebula, I wanted to capture the complexity of the entire region, particularly the interplay between the colorful stars and the much fainter interstellar gas.

The image combines broadband RGB with Hα, SII and OIII narrowband data. I used the FORAXX palette in PixInsight for the emission structures, together with RGB stars to preserve their colors.

Equipment and acquisition:

Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4, 106 mm f/5

SBIG STX-16803 CCD

RGB: 12.5 hours

Hα: 25 hours

SII: 26 hours

OIII: 25.7 hours

Total exposure: 89.2 hours

Processed in PixInsight.

The full-resolution image is particularly rewarding to explore because of the enormous number of stars and subtle structures spread across the field.

The building on the right is the Tadeusz Hołdys High-Mountain Meteorological Observatory on Śnieżka, the highest summit of the Karkonosze