Category: Astrophotograpy

The dim and detailed jellyfish: A 112-hour collaboration from three continents!

The jellyfish nebula is a notoriously dim object in the night sky. As a result, most images of this nebula are highly denoised, leading to a loss of detail. But by combining nearly 1000 exposures and 6740 minutes of exposure from collaborators across three continents for a total integration time of 112.4 hours, we were able to reveal structures and detail previously not displayed by previous images.  In this image, channels are mapped in the classic Hubble palette, where ionized sulfur is represented by red, ionized hydrogen […]

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A luminous M42

The first image from my new mount! The GEM28 has turned out to be an incredibly accurate mount, giving me sharp stars at 600mm with 4 minute exposures! The Great Orion Nebula, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. The bright core illuminates the surrounding the star cluster, highlighting the streams of dark dust on top. Image: Equipment: Nikon D800 […]

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A colorful cosmic rose: A collaboration of 110+ hours of data from three continents

I highly recommend opening the full version to take a closer look at some of the finer details revealed by the large integration time. A starless copy is also provided to show off fainter detail. This incredibly detailed image of the Rosette nebula was created from more than 110 hours of exposure across three continents —  Europe, USA, and Oceania. We combined 1064 subframes and 6791 minutes of exposure to reveal faint details previously masked by lower amounts of data. The high exposure time also allowed us […]

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Nebulosity in the Auriga Region

This image showcases much of the nebulosity in the Auriga region in its natural colors. On the left is the flaming star nebula, an emission-reflection nebulae ionized by the star at its core. The blue parts are reflection, and the red parts are emission. At top center lies the tadpole nebula, a strong emission nebula. On the left are the spider and fly nebulae, two complex regions, of dark nebula, dust, emission nebulae, and reflection nebulae. Below theses two nebula is an open star cluster. Scroll down […]

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Messier 42 and surrounding nebulosity

This image showcases the bright orion nebula and its surrounding dust. The bright central nebula is lit by the star cluster at its center; the rest of the dust is a combination of glowing red hydrogen and darker, cooler dust. Some notable features in this image include the tip of the horsehead nebula on the bottom left, and the dark trail of dust including NGC 1999 on the right. This image combines 28 hours of long exposure with 30 minutes of short exposure to preserve dynamic range. […]

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The Grand Pleiades star cluster

Edit 10/25/2021: This image was featured by AAPOD 2! You can check it out here: https://www.aapod2.com/blog/grand%20pleiades Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. Two techniques were used to get this image: framing selection and downsampling. I chose only about 65% of the frames that I actually […]

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The ghostly shell of Andromeda

This image, I think, is one of the best images I have produced. It’s absolutely incredible to me the vastness of this object — it would take light 200,000 years to cross this galaxy. 26 hours of pure data from a bortle 1 site were used to create the incredibly deep astrograph. The faint shell around the bright galaxy was most likely created by past gravitational interactions with other galaxies. Image: Equipment: Nikon D90 Sigma 300mm prime lens Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Star Adventurer Tripod Bahnitov Mask Intervalometer […]

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A Cosmic Question Mark – NGC 7762 and SH2-170

This target is such a cool target to me – the question mark top is already incredibly interesting, and the little dot below is icing on the cake. NGC 7762 is the big curvy part of the question mark, and SH2-170 is the little dot at the bottom. This target is so big that I actually had to do a two panel mosaic! All the red in this image is caused by hydrogen gas being ionized by the large stars near it, causing the gas to glow […]

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A Sagittarius triplet – M8, M20, and NGC 6559

Edit 9/10/2021: This image was selected for Italy’s APOD GRAG: https://apod.grag.org/2021/09/10/a-sagittarius-triplet-m8-m20-and-ngc-6559/ This so far is my favorite image! Nearly 21 hours of data (taken across 4! nights) and 3 hours of processing went into this huge project. I love the color range so much – golden milky way stars, pink lagoon nebula, and light blue trifid reflection. Image: Equipment: Nikon D90 Sigma 300mm prime lens Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Star Adventurer Tripod Bahintov Mask Intervalometer DIY diffraction spikes using a violin strings Stellarium All Sky Plate Solver Sharpcap […]

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A two-panel mosaic of the Sadr Region

Image: Equipment: Nikon D90 Sigma 300mm prime lens Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Star Adventurer Tripod Bahintov Mask Intervalometer DIY diffraction spikes Stellarium All Sky Plate Solver Sharpcap Laptop Acquisition: Bortle 2-4 Iso 800 F4 8/04/2021 – North Panel 122 x 2′ light frames 100 bias 34 dark 43 usable flats 0/06/2021 – South Panel 106 x 2′ light frames no bias 29 dark 50 flats Processing: Calibrate with WBPP Blink to discard bad frames Generate normalization data with NormalizeScaleGradient Image integrate CFA drizzle scale 1 Crop DBE each […]

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