Category: Astrophotograpy

Peering into the faint outer halo of Messier 83

This is another image from the archives of telescope live – the spiral galaxy M83. I noticed while processing that this dataset was deep enough to include a fainter outer halo that I couldn’t find, so I wanted to show as much of this new halo as I could. It was tricky to balance the brightness of the core with the brightness of the outer halo, but using some pixelmath tricks in conjunction with HDR and GHS I think I was able to do a pretty good […]

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Unbarred Spiral Galaxy NGC 3981

This is another image from the telescope live archives. The data supplied was very hard to work with – the dead CCD rows had some sort of glow that couldn’t be calibrated out, so I had to model the irregular glow on my own using DBE and then subtract it out. I’ve also been trying out the new DeepSNR noise reduction module for pixinsight which seems to remove chroma noise from RGB data quite efficiently. It’s pretty cool to look at the full-quality version of this image […]

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The Eagle and Omega Nebula in the Hubble Palette

This is another image using Telescope Live data – this was imaged using a super fast and wide telescope from Australia The H-alpha data was extremely high quality, and overall editing this was really fun. I’ve been trying out some new techniques to increase contrast and depth in wide nebulosity fields. and I think it worked out really well in this image. Also, after several iterations of color edits, I’ve discovered a pretty nice way to create an SHO image without using colormasks or other destructive processes […]

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Sh2-223, Sh2-224, Sh2-225, Sh2-227 widefield

Sh2-224 is a supernova remnant visible in the constellation of Auriga. It is situated 3.5 ° to SSE of the bright star Capella, the dominant star of the constellation. It is formed by two soft nebulous filaments, the most conspicuous of which is that of the northwest and extends for 20 ‘x 30’ towards the center of the source of radio waves, which has dimensions of 70 ‘x 75’. The object has an unusual shape, with a shell structure with a radius of about 25 parsec, and […]

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NGC 2170: The Angel Nebula

Is this a painting or a photograph? In this classic celestial still life composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula, shines near the image center. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a red emission region, many dark absorption nebulae, and a backdrop of colorful stars. Like the common household items that still life painters often choose for their subjects, the clouds of gas, dust, and hot stars featured here […]

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A 62-hour widefield image of Orion

Edit 2/11/2023: This image was featured by NASA’s universe view screen Instgram, Astronomy Magazine’s image of the day: https://astronomy.com/photos/picture-of-day/2023/02/a-wide-view-of-orion, and the Amateur Astronomy Image of the Day: https://www.aapod2.com/blog/M42 The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky’s most recognizable constellations, they appear in opposite corners of the image. The familiar Horsehead nebula appears as a dark cloud, a small silhouette notched against the long red glow at the lower left. Alnitak is the […]

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Orion Widefield

Cradled in cosmic dust and glowing hydrogen, stellar nurseries in Orion the Hunter lie at the edge of a giant molecular cloud some 1,500 light-years away. Spanning nearly 25 degrees, this breath-taking vista stretches across the well-known constellation from head to toe (left to right). The Great Orion Nebula, the closest large star forming region, is right of center. To its left are the Horsehead Nebula, M78, and Orion’s belt stars. Image: Annotated Image: Equipment: Acquisition: Processing:

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The interacting triplet M81, M82, and NGC 3077- An ultra deep 219 hour collaboration detailing the nuanced interaction remnants and galactic cirrus.

This incredibly detailed image of the interacting triplet M81, M82, and NGC 3077 was created from more than 216 hours of exposure across three continents —  Europe, USA, and Oceania. We combined 4019 subframes and 12993 minutes of exposure to reveal faint details previously masked by lower amounts of data. The high exposure time also allowed us to sharpen fine features, giving the image more contrast and revealing more fine structures. On the top of the image lies NGC 3077, a small starburst dwarf galaxy with a […]

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A luminous M101 with outer spiral arms

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is one of the last entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse’s large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. M101 shares this modern telescopic field of view with more distant background galaxies, foreground stars within the Milky Way, and a companion dwarf galaxy NGC […]

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The Christmas Tree Nebula

Interstellar clouds of hydrogen gas and dust abound in this gorgeous skyscape. The 3 degree wide field of view stretches through the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264 is centered, a complex jumble of cosmic gas, dust and stars about 2,700 light-years distant. It mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection […]

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