I love procrastinating on processing my images! I got set up early at a dark site last month and decided to shoot the sun while it was still up. There were a shitload of sunspots, including AR3697 in the bottom right. This sunspot group was the one that gave us the wonderful aurora back in May (back when it was known as AR3664)

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Moonlite Autofocuser

• Astrozap BAADER AstroSolar Density 5 filter

Acquisition:

• Green filter - 5000 frames at gain 139 and 0.324ms exposure

Capture Software:

• Captured using sharpcap

Processing:

• Stacked the best 25% of frames in Autostakkert, 2X resample and autosharpened

• Colorized using curves in Photoshop

• More lightness/Hue Adjustments

• Astrosurface wavelets to remove some grid artifacts from stacking

• STF applied in pixinsight

• Annotatation

I love procrastinating on processing my images! I got set up early at a dark site last month and decided to shoot the sun while it was still up. There were a shitload of sunspots, including AR3697 in the bottom right. This sunspot group was the one that gave us the wonderful aurora back in May (back when it was known as AR3664)

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Moonlite Autofocuser

• Astrozap BAADER AstroSolar Density 5 filter

Acquisition:

• Green filter - 5000 frames at gain 139 and 0.324ms exposure

Capture Software:

• Captured using sharpcap

Processing:

• Stacked the best 25% of frames in Autostakkert, 2X resample and autosharpened

• Colorized using curves in Photoshop

• More lightness/Hue Adjustments

• Astrosurface wavelets to remove some grid artifacts from stacking

def going to be using this for any of my future planetary projects. Shoutout to Tom on the discord!

• STF applied in pixinsight

• Annotatation

Finally done with classes and I got some time to at least star processing my pics. Gonna be a while before I figure out all the HDR stuff, so here's a pic of the prominences about 10 seconds before C3. It was absolutely nutty seeing them naked eye during the eclipse, and visually through my other telescope. Captured on April 8th, 2024 from Sikeston, MO.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• Canon T3i (Ha modded)

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition:

• Single 1/4000" exposure at ISO 100

Capture Software:

• Eclipse Orchestrator Free for automating the capture sequence

• NINA for controlling the mount and autofocuser

Photoshop processing:

• Crop, and some minor adjustments to exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, and blacks, and slight S curve

JWST primarily looks at very large objects that are far away. Titan (and really everything in the solar system) is relatively close to us, but are tiny in comparison to galaxies/nebulae, so their actual size as they appear in the sky is a lot smaller.

Holy shit this was the most awesome thing I've ever experienced. I've been prepping for this eclipse ever since I got clouded out at the last minute for the 2017 eclipse, and almost everything went perfectly! (I didn't even hit eclipse traffic on the way home!) With the camera automated I got 163 HDR pics during totality, plus more from the partial phases, so expect to see some more pics in the coming weeks!

I really like how the diffraction spikes turned out from the Bailey's Beads, and how the blue turned out in my totality pics. I tried to keep the editing minimal on this, and just did some minor contrast and saturation adjustments (see below for more details). The corona in the image is definitely bluer than how it looked irl (which was mostly just white), but the prominence color is pretty close to what I saw through my other scope. I suspect it's because of the custom white balance I've had to use for my astro modded cam. For those curious here are my other C2 pics, unedited other than cropping

Captured on April 8th, 2024 from Sikeston, MO.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• Canon T3i (Ha modded)

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition:

• Single 1/4000" exposure at ISO 100

Capture Software:

• Eclipse Orchestrator Free for automating the capture sequence

• NINA for controlling the mount and autofocuser

Photoshop processing:

• Just a crop, and some minor adjustments to exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, and blacks

https://github.com/Balackburn/Apollo

You'll have to install AltStore (or Sideloady) on your computer + phone to resign the app each week (this can happen automatically if they're on the same wifi network). You can make your own personal API key at https://old.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ (It's limited to 100 requests per 10 mins, which you wont run into browsing by yourself). Also as long as you moderate a subreddit (I think even if it's just an empty one you make), NSFW content wont be blocked on the API.

Also while you're sideloading, I'd highly recommend uYouPlus for a better youtube app

Well I guess that’s one way to be a smart-ass

Refreshing the ublock caches work most of the time however if it doesn’t, clicking the share button and then ‘embed’ just brings up a regular non-blocked video player

This is a photo from a lunar transit of the space station a few years ago. I had another telescope setup to take a video of the pass, and here's a composite of the frames it took (the whole thing lasted less than a second).

I really enjoy the scale of this image, with the ISS being 540km away, and the moon some 380,000km in the background. more detailed info on the ISS Transit ISS transit can be found here courtesy of transit-finder. Captured on the morning of June 24, 2019 about 30 minutes after sunrise.

Equipment:

• Meade ETX125-EC

• AW 71" Camera Tripod

• Canon Rebel T3i (astro-modified)

• Meade #64 adapter

Acquisition:

• 1/800" at ISO 800 single exposure

Capture:

• I just held down the shutter button a second before the ISS pass occurred, and got 3 frames containing the ISS

Processing:

• AutoColor and Levels adjustments in Photoshop

• MLT noise reduction and annotation in PixInsight

They actually just got rid of the stars, now you just tip people

https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/16ryhv9/celebrating_great_content_is_as_good_as_gold/

Although the Orion Nebula is a popular beginner astrophotography target, it can be difficult to shoot because of the bright core. Combining images with different exposure lengths into an HDR image is necessary in order to properly expose for the faint dust surrounding M42 and the bright nebulosity near the trapezium cluster in the core. I opted to go for a more subtle HDR look with this one, which I think is more visually pleasing than some other overcooked HDR images (aka my previous attempt at it). Also for those interested I made a short time lapse of my telescope in action photographing this. Captured on January 22, 23, and February 7th, 2021 from a Bortle 6 zone (Probably higher local bortle level due to streetlamp at the south end of my driveway)

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 5 hours 54 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)

• L- 109x120" + 50x15" + 50x5"

• R- 23x120" + 25x15"

• G- 23x120" + 25x15"

• B- 22x120" + 25x15"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration per stack per channel (2x, Var β=1.5)

• HDRComposition per filter to make 64-bit HDR images

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

Luminance:

• EZ Deconvolution

• EZ Denoise

• STF applied via HistogramTransformation to make nonlinear

RGB:

• ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R, G, and B HDR stacks into color image

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

• PhotometricColorCalibration

• SCNR to partially remove greens

• HSV repair to saturate clipped star cores

• Linked STF applied via HistogramTransformation to make nonlinear

Nonlinear:

• EZ HDR applied to reveal detail in blown out core per Luminance and RGB images

I opted to only mix 10% of the HDR image back in the original luminance. Wanted to go with a more subtle HDR look that didn't feel too 'overcooked' while keeping some of the nebulosity near the trapezium visible in the final image.

• LRGBCombination to add lum image as a luminance layer to the RGB image

• CurveTransformation to adjust lightness, contrast, and saturation

• ACDNR

• LocalHistogramTransformation

• HistogramTransformation to slightly stretch image

• Another Curve for saturation boost

• EZ Star Reduction

• Resample to 78%

• Annotation

This is one of my longer projects, with 84 hours of long exposure time over 2 seasons going into this photo. Sh2-224 is an extremely faint nebula, and this is what a single 10 minute long exposure (through a Ha narrowband filter) of it looks like. I ended up getting ~83 hours of narrowband exposures like this, plus about an hour of RGB images for the stars. Because it's so faint, if the moon was up at all I did not shoot it, which cut the number of clear nights I could reasonably image it in half. The nebula itself is false color (although the HOO palette I used is fairly close to natural color), the stars were taken with RGB filters and are true color. With this project I finally managed to learn how to do some starless processing techniques for combining the stars+nebula

Captured over 27 nights between February 2021 and April 2022, from my Bortle 6 driveway

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 83 hours 52 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)

• Ha - 266x600"

• Oiii - 231x600"

• Red- 14x90"

• Green- 14x90"

• Blue- 14x90"

• Darks- 30

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• SubframeSelector

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

Narrowband processing:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtractions

• NoiseXTerminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars for starless processing

to be later replaced by RGB stars. doing this allows the nebula to be stretched without worrying about blowing out stars

• HistogramTransformations to stretch nonlinear

RGB Linear Processing:

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtractions

• ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R, G, and B frames into color image

• PhotometricColorCalibration

• Slight SCNR Green

• HSV Repair

super useful for putting color back into blown out star cores

• StarXterminator to generate stars only image

basically just getting rid of the background

• ArcsinhStretch + Histogram transformation to stretch nonlinear

Combining Channels:

• ChannelCombination to combine stretched Ha and Oiii images into color image

Ha mapped to red channel, Oiii to Green and Blue

• HistogramTransformation to re-linearize HOO and RGB stars images

• PixelMath to add RGB stars only image to starless HOO image

HOO + Stars the math was simple

• HistogramTransformation to bring HOO+Stars pic back to nonlinear state

Nonlinear:

• Shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast, hues, etc. with various masks

• ColorSaturation to selective saturate/desaturate specific hues

• More curves

• Slight SCNR Green

• NoiseXterminator

• LRGBCombination with extracted L as luminance, used for chrominance noise reduction

• even more curves

• color saturation again

• SCNR to remove some green star color

• EZ star reduction

• NoiseGenerator to add noise into reduced star areas

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• guess what baby more curves!

• Extract L --> LRGBCombination again with mask for larger scale background chrominance noise reduction

• Resample to 70%

• Annotation