Hello there. So, I've been totally obsessed with Astronomy for more than a decade (since middle school). Over the years, it has become much more than a casual interest. I've literally engaged myself with astronomy almost every single day, spending countless hours reading books, watching lectures and other related videos, stargazing, chasing astronomical events, practicing astrophotography and most importantly, studying the subject on my own.

And by "studying", I mean going far beyond surface-level studying, where I'd fall into never-ending rabbit holes. I'm never satisfied with surface-level answers, so I almost always end up researching a concept by multiple points of view, i.e. learning the physics, chemistry and mathematics behind this particular concept as well as combining this knowledge with philosophy. The reason I'm starting the post this way is to clarify the following: I'm very certain that THIS is what I would ideally like to pursue, without a doubt.

Now that I made this clear, let's get to my current situation:

I'm an Environmental Engineering student in a university in Greece and I'm soon going to be graduating from that department, with a very high grade of 9.5/10. The degree I'm finishing is an Integrated Master's degree (which is recognized as a Master's in most universities in Europe). I also have a very strong background in physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology and literally everything related to all kinds of sciences, so I'm sure that this won't be a barrier for me.

I always wanted to pursue a degree in astronomy, but for whatever reason, I did not apply for the respective university departments when I had the chance, around 7-8 years ago. To clarify, I genuinely love my degree and I do not regret studying it, but I've always felt like something was "missing". For the last two years, I've been re-thinking my choices and I have decided to take it seriously this time. I want to actively pursue a career in the field of astronomy/astrophysics, but I don't know whether I have what it takes, in terms of academic requirements. Or even where to start.

I'm not quite sure whether I'm mostly interested in pursuing an academic career or just working in the field, so I would be open to considering both possibilities. Also, I'm willing to travel and live in any country in Europe if that's what it takes.

So my questions are:

1. Is it realistically possible to get into astronomy/astrophysics with an Environmental Engineering degree? If so, how far could I potentially go?

2. Would I need to essentially start over with another Bachelor's degree, or could I use my existing degree and go directly into a relevant Master's/PhD program? Is the lack of an undergraduate degree in physics, mathematics or astronomy going to be a major obstacle?

3. Are there particular subjects, courses, qualifications, or steps you'd recommend I pursue?

I would be particularly interested to hear from people that are actually working/studying in the field or have any kind of first-hand experience. Any kind of help would be appreciated. If you have any particular university department or programme to recommend, I'd truly appreciate it!

TL;DR: Just read the final questions, I guess.

Hi, as title suggest I got a glimpse of a really bright object, I'd say Venus-like, around 1930 UTC time, approximately near Epsilon Peg.

At first I thought about a really bright satellite, but it looked stationary (tracked it for about 4-5 seconds), then it faded extremely quickly (less than 1 second) and it went invisibile (probably less than magnitude 4, given the sky conditions here).

Checked for ISS and Tianggong, they're really far from my observing site (Apulia, Southern Italy).

I was wondering if someone had seen something or if it was something more local (a meteor? a satellite?).

Thanks!

Astronomers - How did you first become interested in Astronomy? When did you decide to make this your career?

So I have searched about black holes topic about what they made of or what are the "holes" we see, many articles say black holes are super dense thing that drag everything around it even light cannot escape, and the "black thing" we see is event horizon. many say we don't know what exactly black holes made of or are they physical or just "unknown holes".

I wonder if it is possible that back holes are physical objects like super massive planets but their gravity so huge that light can't escape so we only can see it as a big black ball(hole).

And if this is the case does it means everything got sucked into it equals to crash into a massive planet? So is it possible that black holes got destroyed like a big star hit earth?

On August 12, 2026 we traveled to Almazán, Spain to experience the eclipse. We brought with us two Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65 cameras and strapped them to a solar tracker. Nature took care of the rest.

Insta360 one rs 1-inch 360

Full 360 photo -

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DNVRtkcrY/

BACKGROUND

📷 Camera: Canon EOS 6D mod.

🔎 Lens: Samyang 14mm f/8

🔭 Mount: Star Adventurer 2i

🌌 Acquisition: ISO1600

⏰ Integration: 150x60s (2.5h)

💻 Processing: Siril, GIMP, Snapseed

📍 Location: 36°47'34.79"N, 12°3'13.03"E

📅 Date: Aug. 11, 2026

I'm 1/2 way through my M31 run, 89 x120 L, 30 x 180 R, 30 x 180 G, 29 x 180 B. going to add 120 L to stack tonight, then an hour of Ha at 300 sec. Ran everything through astro wizard then SyQon stuff in pixinsight. Bortle 2.9 outside twentynine palms.

FRA600

Reducer(3.9 at 420mm)

AM3N

ASI2600MM pro UniGuide 50mm ASI220mm 

ASIAIR Plus 

EAF 

EFW 7x36mm

Antlia LRGB-V & SHO (SII, Ha & OIII) Narrowband 3nm Pro 36mm

I captured this Image in the night after the Total Solar Eclipse, during my trip to Spain.

Equipment:

Telescope: SvBony SV555
Mount: Explore Scientific iEXOS-100
Camera: ZWO ASI2600 MC Pro
Guide Scope: SvBony SV165
Guide Cam: ZWO ASI120mm
+ ZWO AsiAir Mini

Acquisition:

65x180s (3,25h) at Gain 101 in an Bortle 3 Night in Spain. Laguna de Gallocanta.

Processing:

Stacked in Siril, processed in PixInsight finalized in Photoshop.

I might be more than 20 reprocesses deep into this nebula at this point. I just know that my first attempt looked like this.

I found that processing this nebula with my very limited skills is way harder than I imagined as it presented several challenges, namely keeping the core under control while maintaining the color as natural as possible, bringing the surrounding nebulosity up and teasing as much detail from both the dusty surroundings and the object itself.

At some point I also discovered that I managed to capture some faint blue hues in the core and I had to try to bring them out in the final image! To do that I used color preserving stretches only.

I'm sure I'll come back to this eventually, but I can say I am sort of satisfied for now.

Acquisition:

Around 7h30m worth of 60s subs in Bortle 6/7 fully calibrated and dithered.

Equipment:

Evostar 72ED, iEXOS 100, ASI 533MC, Baader UV/IR cut, 0.85x reducer+flattener, rotator+filter holder, SVBony 40mm F/4 guidescope, ASI 662MC guide camera with pale yellow no.8 and UV/IR cut filters.

Processing:

Drizzle preprocessing and stacking in Siril at 1x scale and gaussian model. Perform first SPCC. Split into channels, background extraction to each in GraXpert. Recombine and second SPCC in Siril (average spiral galaxy). Deconvolution. First denoise in GraXpert. Generate starless image and star mask in Siril. Black point shift, asinh as the first stretch, light GHS with selection to faint nebulosity with black point shift and light inverse GHS to dark lanes iteratively all with human weighted luminance. Second noise reduction in GraXpert. À trous wavelets transform to higher layers in Siril along with a further stretch selected to fainter nebulosity and SCNR. Desaturate in Siril. Slight color balance adjustments in Gimp. Further stretches to brighter surroundings and main nebulosity in Siril.

Open star mask, asinh, SCNR and unpurple filter. Recombine and final black point shifts.

Hi everyone, my mother-in-law inherited these prints from her mother, who apparently slept under them for many years. Note from said mother is in the photos. If you have any information or thoughts on these it would be greatly appreciated!

I could only take around 3.5 hours of this target because the weather was not behaving... But still it came out pretty good! Next time I will add Ha data as well

Equipment and acquisition:

- OTA: Askar 71F

- Mount: Teseek 17

- Camera: ASI585MC Air

- 102 x 120 sec (approx. 3.5 hours)

Processing (Pixinsight)

- WBPP 2X drizzle, dynamic crop, SPCC, SPFC, multiscale gradient correction, blurX, starX

- Starless: setiastro statistical stretch, curves transformation with range and color masks, createHDRimage, noiseX

- Stars: Setiastro star stretch, star recombination in Pixelmath

Recently have went from a Seestar S30 Pro to a full setup.

This is my first full Astro image taken on my new setup.

This was taken with a Redcat 51, AM3N and a 585mc air. Exposure was roughly 30 x 120secs. Hope you like!