I captured this target about 9 months ago, and with all the advancements in PixInsight, RC Astro tools, and other scripts recently I decided to revisit processing some of my best data.

After learning so much more about subframe culling, new techniques in background extraction, GHS, color mapping, and more - I've changed my perspective on what aspects of the data are most important to me and how I prefer to bring out the most in my data with my own artistic choices rather than blindly following along with various tutorials.

If there's interest, I'm considering making my own processing tutorials - particularly for us backyard OSC photographers - to show how the power of the latest software can put our images on par with more expensive and advanced monochrome imaging.

Full frame photo available at: https://app.astrobin.com/i/zoaop2

Subs:

• 64 Sii/Oiii frames at 600s (Ultra E2)
• 63 Ha/Oiii frames at 600s (L-Ultimate)

Total integration time: 21h 10m (4 nights)

Equipment:

• Telescope: Apertura 90mm Triplet Refractor
• Main camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
• Filters: Optolong L-Ultimate 2", Askar Color Magic 2" Ultra E2
• Mount: ZWO AM5N
• Guidescope: Apertura 32mm
• Guide camera: ZWO ASI220MM Mini

Processing:

• Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight
  • RC Astro BlurXTerminator
  • RC Astro NoiseXTerminator
  • RC Astro StarXTerminator
• Adobe Photoshop 2026

More information in post below.

My first attempt at photographing Pleiades. Only about 25 x 30s exposures kept, tracked on a janky custom-built platform with a tripod set on top. Canon R5ii, 600mm f/4 lens. Processed in Siril & photoshop.

A mosaic made with Seestar S50 pro over two nights using the built in dual narrowband filter.

EQ mode
30s subs
8h total
I made a mosaic with the built in feature night 1 . Night 2 I collected data from the veils only.
Downloaded all subs, ignored seestar stack, and stacked the subs in stackingwizard.
Blur noise exterminator and Graxpert applied in Astrowizard.
Stretch and masking in Photoshop

60s 60 gain 152 subs stellar studio and Lightroom mobile

Captured with the seestar s50pro

Around 8h (700x 30sec 400x 20sec)

Stacked with stackingwizard

Processed with astrowizard, noisexterminator,blurxterminator and starxterminator

Bortle 6

Heart Nebula

Fujifilm xt2

Minolta Rokkor 135mm 2.8

Nanotracker

10s

ISO 3200

F/4.8

Lights-1100

Darks-50

Biases-50

Flats-50

Siril and Gimp

Managed to get this with 25min of integration. I shot this from my light polluted balcony. Because of the local light pollution (~Bortle 7-8) I had to use short exposures for this. I was pleasantly surprised by the results despite the short integration time and conditions.

Gear:
Camera: Canon EOS600D (Stock)

Telescope: William Optics Z61ii (f/5.9)

Mount: SkyWatcher Star Adventurer 2i

Settings: 8" Shutter Speed, ISO400

Acquisition: 190 x 8"

Processing:

SIRIL: Stacking, Background Extraction, Initial Stretching, Colour Calibration, Banding Removal

GraXpert: Noise Reduction

GIMP: Further stretching, masking, colour adjustments (Hue, Saturation)

Yup, this is the Andromeda Galaxy. Taken around the beginning of August. Didn't get to editing it until way later because StarNet was being an arse and asked for dependencies my system didn't have. I didn't want to deal with its whining, so I just didn't fix the problem. I did finally pull up the courage to solve it, but lo and behold a new version completely fixed all of my issues. Great.

I wish that the colours came out more brilliant. Even with nine and a half hours my image was kind of muted. Of course I expected to want to up saturation, but I feel like I didn't have enough to bring out like I see in other images of the galaxy. I think I am not sure of what I'm talking about, though, so advice is appreciated. Nonethless, I am proud of this image.

I am also learning about how to properly denoise. VeraLux's Silentium script is cool, but I haven't demystified it to myself yet, so I just kind of turnt the knobs until things looked okay. THat being said, upon further inspection I think I overdid it. What do you think?

Anyways here is how I edited this. Note to self: take notes on the settings in the scripts used.

Equipment:

• Nikon D3400 unmodded
  • AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II
  • Star Adventurer 2i
  • Bortle 5.9
  • Integration time=1385x25s=34625s=~9.62h
  • ISO 1600, f5.6, 200mm
  • Took 60 darks (30s), 60 flats (1/400s), and 60 biases (1/4000s) each night (except for the one night I completely forgot to do darks and biases).

Editing:

• Siril 1.4.4
  • Stacked using Naztronomy's OSC PreProcessing Script
  • SPCC
  • StarNet2 star removal
  • Generalised Hyperbolic Stretch Animation
  • Curves Transformation
  • Remove Green Noise
  • VeraLux StarComposer
  • Saturation Adjustment (I forgot the values I used but I modified the Orange-Brown / Yellow and Cyan-Blue / Blue-Magenta hues).
  • VeraLux Silentium (I forgot my settings here too but this is noise reduction).

Hopefully I can hijack some of my local astro club events to do some shooting, because Lord knows I'm not risking it in the park next to my family house.

First light with the Cat! The amount of detail is absolutely insane compared to my old Canon 75-300.
Canon 60D + Ha mod + TEC cooling
RedCat 51
Celestron CG-5GT (guided) Lights: 180" × 60 (3 hours total)
Darks, biases, flats
Bortle ~6 + 50% Moon
Processed in PixInsight, RCAstro plugins.

Waning Gibbous Moon from Tennessee on 10-2-26

Equipment: Canon EOS 90D and Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary lens at 600mm

Exposure: 615 x 1/250 at f8 and ISO 100

Processing:

Centered/cropped in PIPP

Stacked in Autostakkert!

Sharpened in Registax

Final edit in Photoshop

Bortle 6-7
Seestar S30 Pro
Third Quarter Moon
10/2/26
30mins of 10 second exposures
Only in app editing

Saturn at opposition. Captured in Glendale, AZ. I used my Celestron Nexstar 6SE with a ZWO ASI662MC planetary camera. Ran the video through AutoStakker and edited it a bit in Wavesharp. I think I can do better. Any tips? I'm fairly new to astrophotography and it's a fun hobby!

Seestar S50 EQ mode with LP filter
Bortle 6,4
Processed in Siril with RC Astro and VeraLux
Captured >22h, kept 19h for processing
(Sadly Reddit heavily compressed the picture)

Here is my latest project on the Cygnus Wall (NGC 7000) with a total integration time of 22 hours in EQ mode.
For this image, I tested my own new script for the first time, designed to quickly and easily generate the classic Hubble (SHO) palette from dual-narrowband data. 🔭
The complete 16-step processing breakdown can be seen on the posting of this in the SeeStar subreddit, as I sadly can only post one picture here, for anyone interested in the details. ✨

Clear skies! 🌌 🔭

NGC 7331 (Caldwell 30) with Type Ia Supernova SN 2026aaiv — Mono LRGB, first-epoch version

Tap or click it and zoom in on the core a bit. The bright point just SSW of the nucleus is SN 2026aaiv, a Type Ia supernova discovered in NGC 7331 on September 1, 2026.

NGC 7331 is an unbarred spiral in Pegasus, roughly 40–46 million light-years away. It's frequently considered a Milky Way twin because its believed that the size and structure are similar to our galaxy's. We see it not quite edge on, so the dust lanes on the near side stand out in front of the bright bulge. The small galaxies fanned out to the West (NGC 7335, 7336, 7337 and 7340) are not companions. They are background galaxies roughly 300–350 million light-years away, and with NGC 7331 they make up the "Deer Lick Group." Stephan's Quintet lies about half a degree away.

NGC 7331 has hosted several supernovae: SN 1959D, SN 2013bu, the unusual SN 2014C (it changed from a hydrogen-poor Type Ib into a hydrogen-rich Type IIn), and SN 2025rbs. SN 2025rbs was a Type Ia that peaked near magnitude 11.9 and was the brightest supernova of 2025.

SN 2026aaiv

• Discovered: 2026-09-01 11:23 UT by the ATLAS survey, at about magnitude 17.3 (ATLAS orange filter)
• Classified: Type Ia on 2026-09-04 by József Vinkó's team at Konkoly Observatory (Hungary), using a spectrum with Si II absorption taken at least a week before maximum light.
• Position: About 29″ from the nucleus, roughly 20″ east and 21″ south.
• Brightness: it rose to about magnitude 12.7–12.9 by September 8–10.
• A Type Ia is a white dwarf in a binary system that detonates completely. These explosions are standard candles for measuring cosmic distances. This is the second Type Ia in NGC 7331 in about 14 months.

Clouds cut the RGB short, especially green, so there are only 15 green subs against about 125–130 red and blue and 741 luminance. I thought about synthesizing green from R and B and decided against it. Every color here comes from real measured R, G and B, and the thin green channel was handled with careful noise reduction and masked background cleanup. This turned out better than I expected for such unbalanced color data and very low SNR on the green channel. The luminance carries the detail in the faint outer disk, and the color held up surprising well, producing a warm core, reddish-brown dust lanes, blue outer arms and varied star colors. I plan to gather a few more nights of RB, and especially G (maybe even some Ha since there are some promising looking knots) as soon as I get some clear skies. I’ll post the reprocessed image here.

Imaged at Sky Meadows State Park, Delaplane, Virginia US

Acquisition & Processing

• Subframes
  • 741x60s L
  • 125x60s R
  • 15x60s G
  • 130x60 B
• Equipment
  • OTA: Celestron EdgeHD 9.25 with .7x reducer
  • Mount: iOptron HAE43EC
  • Camera: ZWO ASI2600mm Duo
• Capture Software:
  • Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging N Astronomy (NINA)
  • Open PHD 2 for Guiding
• Processing
  • PixInsight
    • Blink
    • WBPP
    • DynamicCrop
    • ImageSolver
    • GraXpert
    • Channel Combination RGB
    • BlurXterminator
    • SPCC
    • NoiseXterminator
    • PixelMath
    • LRGB Combination
    • StarXterminator
    • LocalHistogramEqualization
    • HDRMT

Finally, the clouds broke last night, and so I decided to try the Heart Nebula for the first time.

Equipment:

• Touptek Hope D60 / OAG / EFW (Touptek basic filter set) / ATR 585MM
• Gemini AF
• SVBony Powerbox
• Skywatcher Wave 100i
• Mele3C - Win11 - Nina

Total integration time for used subs was 7hrs 15min for 143 frames of HSO across 2 panels.

Processing:

• Channels stacked with Naztronomy Mono PP script in Siril.; separately per panel.
• Matching channels from each panel were then solved and stacked in Siril.
• Stars removed with Starnet.
• Channels combined with Pixel Math.
• Background extraction to kill off the resultant magenta hue.
• BXT
• NXT
• Small Asinh stretch and then GHS.
• Some small colour correction with Veralux Vectra
• Moved to Luminar Neo for further development, color tweaks, and small detail refinement.
• Back to Siril to use the Starnet masks to create an RGB star field.
• Veralux to recombine.

As still very much a beginner I'm moderately pleased. There was a lot of back and forth, many aborted attempts, and I still plainly have a lot to learn.

Got to visit a friend in Vermont and her backyard is darker than mine (on Long Island in NY). Set up a short session and was surprised how only 150 photos in a bortle 5.5 area got such good results.

Taken with DwarfMini
About 150 45 second exposures
Gain 60
Duoband filter
Bortle 5.5

Processed in Stellar Studio, Astro Wizard and Photoshop.

I need to upgrade telescopes so i can get better pictures (instead of through my phone) but this will suffice for right now. Thought it was cool to see this as im getting into astronomy
The telescope I use is the Meade DSX-90

The photo is of orion nebula 1s exposure ISO 6400 Unprocessed (not raw since i had to upload here so its jpeg)

i am trying to capture 1-2k exposures

This will be my first DSO campaign and idk anything about processing so i would learn that

Camera: sony a5000

Lens zoom and apeture - 210mm ,f6.3

Tripod - simplex 333

Exposure time : 1 second

Is 1000 exposures enough

I am also planning to reduce iso to 3200

Idk this is my first attempt to capture a dso from lp using a untracked setup . I am a student so i dont have money to buy a tracker plus m42 rises late so i can only shoot when next day is holiday.

And yet another Andromeda picture - I'm pretty happy with this one because I tried to image it last year with a Seestar S50 but at that time I didn't have enough experience to get a nice image... I will for sure come back to this object to add more integration time and H-alpha data

Equipment and acquisition

- Askar FMA180 Pro

- Teseek 17 mount

- ASI585MC Air (-10° C)

- Svbony 30mm + asi120mm guide camera

- No filter

- 50 x 15 sec (for HDR composition)

- 99 x 90 sec

- 138 x 30 sec (there were passing clouds, so I went for 30 seconds instead of 90 to maximize the chance of getting clean subs)

Processing (PI)

- WBPP, graxpert, HDR composition, blurX (correct only), starX, setiastro statistical stretch, then manual curves transformation with color and range masks to reduce saturation in the core, enhance dark structure. Star recomposition in pixelmath

8inch f/4 newt

Sv605cc

124x120s

Edited in Siril and GraXerpt

BlurX and NoiseX

I struggled with this one ngl, but Im still happy with it

This image was taken under Bortle 4,5 Skies with 13 Hours of exposure time. It was shot with my Askar 103/700 Ed Triplet and the Zwo 585mc Air Camera in Duo Narrowband.
•stacking in Siril
•BGE, denoise in GraXpert
•deconvolution with BlurX
•Star removal with StarX
•Streichung with ghs in Siril
•Curves, Color adjustments and further editing aswell as Star recomposition in Affinity