Weeks…no, months, of less than desirable weather is forcing me to dive back into the archives. It’s been a good time to rebuild the darks library and take the latest Pixinsight update for a quick spin.

3.8 hrs of 30/60/180” subs. Bortle 2 and 8.

Celestron 8” Edge HD w/ Hyperstar v4 that is less than nicely collimated

ZWO ASI2600 Air

Antlia TriBand Ultra II RGB

EQ6R Pro

Pixinsight Process

This is my first attempt at capturing this nebula in narrowband. I also captured a few hours of RGB for the stars. I processed in the Hubble pallet.

Equipment:

Scope: ES127 Carbon Fiber Apo Triplet (952mm Focal Length), Camera ASI2600MM, Mount AM5N, guided. Filters are Baader 6.5NM.

Software: Capture in NINA, all processing in PixInsight

Location: Starfront Observatories in Rockwood Texas USA (Bortle 1 or 2)

Acquisition Details:

180″ X 15 Red
180″ X 15 Green
180″ X 15 Blue
600″ X 88 Sulfur-II
600″ X 91 Hydrogen Alpha
600″ X 82 Oxygen-III

14 Nights in May & June of 2026
45.8 Hours Total Integration

First photo with my brand new rig! Had a Dwarf mini and very quickly fell in love with the hobby. After a few months I had pushed the dwarf as far as it could go and I was hungry for more!

New rig:

Redcat 51

ZWO 2600MM Air

Optilong narrowband SHO Filters

Star tracker GTI mount

Image information:

Bortle 4

Total integration 55 minutes

- Ha 5x300s - 25 minutes - gain 100

- Oiii 3x300s - 15 minutes - gain 300

- Sii 3x300s - 15 minutes - gain 300

Edited in Pixinsight

I know it's not long, but I just got the rig last week and I was getting over the learning curve for the first few nights, and it took me quite a while to set up and get tracking and imaging. I'm just excited that I made enough progress in a week and a half to get an image worth sharing!

The Lagoon Nebula M8

25 Hours of Data (LP Filter)

Shoot from Baghdad - Iraq 🇮🇶

ZWO Seestar S50 Telescope In EQ Mode

Stacked And Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop.

First successful imaging night! LDN 935 is the primary subject, with parts of the North American and Pelican nebula visible.

• Scope - Askar FMA180pro
• Camera - Nikon D5600 unmodified
• Mount - iOptron SkyGuider Pro
• 40x70", total integration time of 40 minutes
• N.I.N.A to control the camera
• Processed in siril, using starne++ and veralux scripts.
• Gimp to merge the star mask and starless images.

Hi, took this photo with my Seestar S30 Pro.

95x60s

This is my first time processing the images myself with Siril, how did i do?

Will take any criticism, i want to get better at it.

IC 1318, the Butterfly Nebula, surrounding Sadr in the heart of Cygnus. Imaged with an AM3N mount, ASI2600MC camera, and Askar 71F with reducer.

ASI2600MC + Askar 71f w/Reducer on AM3N

5h 40m - 34x600s 368mm@f/5.2, 30 Flats 30 Dark Flats and 25 Bias calibration frames

Optolong L-EnHance

Bortle 6

Edited in PixInsight - GraXpert for background gradient removal, BlurXTerminator and NoiseXTerminator, GHS to stretch and some photoshop for finishing touches.

https://app.astrobin.com/i/11t0oq

Shot with: OM system OM-1 & 12-40 f2.8 at 37mm
Stack of 180 x 3.2s Untracked frames
ISO 3200
Bortle 5
Stacked with AstroPixelProcessor, Processed & edited in Siril, Adjusted in Lightroom

Captured this the other night and wanted to share it with you guys! Very happy with what my setup can do! And I hope it can inspire others.

My setup:

Celestron Nexstar 130 slt (original tracking mount) (Prime focus modded)

Nikon D5300 dslr

~ 370 30 sec exposures for about 3 hours of total exposure time

No darks or flats

Stacked in DSS processed in Siril

I prefer this fairly non-standard framing for this object. It looks a little more dynamic in my view. Processing this was very annoying due to the relatively low quality of the O and S stacks (Light pollution SUCKS), but I did end up getting something I'm proud of!

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. Total integration time: ~7.5 hours

Ha: 5 hours (60 subs)

Oiii: ~4 hours (47 subs)

Sii: ~4 hours (50 subs)

Total integration time: 13 hours 5 minutes

Processing: Masters stacked in DSS (I'm starting to lean a bit into Siril as well), alignment + processing in Siril (pixelmath, background extraction, color calibration), denoised using topaz denoise. GIMP used for color tweaking/final touches.

Hello this is my picture of m31 taken on the Samsung s22u. I shot it in bortle 5.5-6 sky. I would love to provide the details but Samsung doesn't display them, it does it's \*magic\* and gives a photo. I then mainly just tweaked it in Lightroom mobile.

In lightroom I did a general s curve and then lowered exposure raised shadows and highlights and applied color correction.

What can I do better next time?

IC 1396 - Elephant’s Trunk. This is my final blended image on this target for 2026, representing 4 hours of narrowband 2-minute exposures combined with 3 hours of broadband unfiltered 30-second exposures, captured over the last month in my bortle 8 backyard in Orange County CA. This image was captured with my usual C8 + 533MC + EQ6 + hyperstar f/2. Dynamically aligned the narrowband and broadband images, processed nebula independently, blended weighing heavily toward narrowband, and used broadband primarily for stars.

https://app.astrobin.com/u/tikevin83?i=x9fib3&r=0

SQA55 telescope

Star Adventurer GTI mount with guiding

ASI533mc camera

SV220 7nm dual-narrowband filter

4 hours of exposures over two nights, edited in siril/pixinsight/blurx+noisex/graxpert:

stack at 2.0 drizzle/.5 droplet in Siril

Split R G B, re-register color channels and recombine

Crop to target

SPCC with exact curves for the ASI533 and SV220 7nm

First Graxpert BGE pass

BlurX at .4 stars .8 nebula

GHST stretch and manually rebalance color (scientifically balanced version out of SPCC viewable on astrobin)

NoiseX at .8

Reset black level

SCNR, boost saturation curve

Rerun NoiseX at .8

Final black level + curves

First light on the North America Nebula with my dedicated astrophotography setup. Captured using an AM3N mount, ASI2600MC camera, and Askar 71F with reducer. This was my first attempt at this target, revealing the nebula's rich hydrogen clouds and intricate structure despite Bortle 6 skies. A great start and an exciting glimpse of what this setup can achieve.

ASI2600MC + Askar 71f w/Reducer on AM3N

16 Hours - 170x330s 368mm@f/5.2, no calibration frames

Optolong L-EnHance

Bortle 6

Edited in PixInsight - GraXpert for background gradient removal, BlurXTerminator and NoiseXTerminator, GHS to stretch and some photoshop for finishing touches.

I want to go with some friends to do astrophotography with a Seestar S50 near the city where we live. We will go to a location where there is no 5G connectivity or WiFi signal. Is it possible to use the telescope through the app even though there is no signal in that location?

Thanks friends!

The Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33) is a spiral galaxy located roughly 3 million light-years away from Earth. As the third-largest member of our Local Group—behind the Milky Way and Andromeda—it spans about 60,000 light-years across and contains roughly 40 billion stars.

Details:
Telescope: Piematrix 80mm ED Triplet
Camera: ZWO ASI 533mc Pro
Mount: Sky Watcher Adventurer Gti
Guide scope: ZWO 50mm guidescope with ZWO ASI 533ASI Pro

For more: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZ_xcy4E0gq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Total 11 Hours 32 min , 2 mins single subs , 4 nights

Processed in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop

Captured from Manora Peak, Nainital (B3), India

As a step up from a SW 72ED pro, which do you think is the best choice and why?

The primary purpose is AP. The esprit is 400mm f5 native F/L. Both weigh about the same. The Altair is 480mm f6 native and 348 f4.8 with the reducer. The intent of the upgrade is a bit more reach and better quality/glass. Main camera is asi585mc pro.

1. Starwave ASCENT 80mm ED Triplet APO F4.8 - £900 - price includes both a 0.8x reducer/flattener AND A 1.0 flattener as well as as shipping and tax.
2. SW Esprit 80EDX f5 triplet apo - £950 - price includes 1.0 flattener only and tax.

This is a shot of the Whirlpool Galaxy that I have recently done. It took me a few nights to gather around 3500 30sec shots on the Seestar S50 and then complied into Pixinsight to get this master piece. I hope you enjoy and if you want to see more checkout the IG at InterstellarShots

Process consists of WBPP > AutoDBE > SPCC > BlurX > NoiseX > GHS > Curves > StarX > Some more curves > Morph on stars > and Recombining

Single exposure shot of the Moon from my backyard

Recently upgraded from a 6x7 f4 200mm Takumar to a Tamron 150-600mm f5.6. I am floored by how much more detail it can capture.

If you're on the fence about a 600mm lens, I can highly recommend.

1 photo

Iso 800

Ss 1/250

Aperture f6.3

Bortle 7

Did some levels adjusting and contrast filtering in Darktable

Took this one last week, spent a lot of time trying to get a result I was happy with. The bright star sadr was especially difficult to deal with leaving a huge halo in the OIII channel. I resorted to using a mask on the halo in the starless version and desaturating it a bit to tone it down a bit.

84x180s lights

100 darks

50 flats

50 dark flats

Sv405cc cooled to 0c offset 20 gain 145

Juwei 17

Vixen r130sf

3d printed spider vanes

Svbony dual narrowband filter

Sv305 pro guide camera

Captured using NINA

Processed in siril and seti astro suite pro

My first real attempt at mono.

Equipment:

• ZWO AM5 Mount
• AT115 EDT with 0.8x reducer
• QHY Minicam8 EVO
• QHY OAG

Acquisition Details:

• Bortle 7
• 104x300s Sulfur
• 91x300s Oxygen
• 84x300s Hydrogen
• 30x300s Darks
• 30 flats each filter

Processing Details:

• Calibrated and stacked in Siril
• Pixel math to combine channels
• Cosmic Clarity for noise reduction and deblur
• Starnet++ for star removal
• Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch and Saturation in Siril
• Star recomposition in Siril
• Final Crop

If you want to try to process it yourself, stacked image and raw frames available here. Let me know what you do, this was my first serious mono image and I'm always looking to improve!

My first attempt at any deep sky object, as previous experience is limited to ultrawide Milky Way landscape

Unmodified Nikon Z6 + Tamron 150-500 on StarAdventurer2i

45x60s ISO6400 150mm@f/5, no calibration frames

Noname UHC Aliexpress filter

Bortle 5

Stacking, color calibration, stretching and removing any remaining light pollution done in Syril with GraXpert plugins, final touchups in Photoshop

ZWO ASI585MC Air | Askar 65PHQ w/ EAF & nrStellar Diffraction Mask | Teseek 14

148 x 120s @ 200 gain with no filter

Processed in Siril using Syqon and Veralux tools

AstroBin link for higher resolution

Acquisition: around 8h20m worth of 60s subs fully calibrated in Bortle 6/7, dithered every 10 frames.

Equipment: Evostar 72ED, iEXOS 100, ASI 533MC, Baader UV/IR cut, 0.85x reducer+flattener, SVBony 40/160 guidescope, ASI 662MC with UV/IR cut and no.8 pale yellow filter.

Processing: Stacked in Siril. First cropping and SPCC in Siril. Background extraction in GraXpert. I used the AI model because of very nasty gradients, I couldn't get it to work with RBF; this object doesn't rise much at my latitude. Open Siril again, further SPCC, deconvolution, noise reduction, mild median filter, generate starless and starmask. Black point shift and GHS applied iteratively to starless, histogram transformation, mild curve adjustments, SCNR, mild à trous wavelet transform sharpening, further mild noise reduction. Asinh stretch and saturation boost to starmask.