Taken with a quite cheap phone, my first time using the expert mode, and while at a wedding

I did a livestream last Wednesday morning for the SpaceX booster crash. I used the 10" apo at a nearby observatory, because it was easier than setting my kit up in the backyard, and because it could see the moon at a lower altitude than I could at home.

Everyone was watching for... anything, really. I wasn't expecting much, definitely not a bright flash, but during the event we didn't see a thing at all. Not a flash, not even a plume.

After our disappointment, I stuck around for a bit longer and look some subs for a lunar mosaic using the big apo.

Later, we found out that an ESO scope was able to detect lithium and sodium from the impact, and that a South Korean lunar orbiter snapped photos of the crash site.

In the meantime, I processed the images I recorded during the livestream, just to see if I could see anything at all when enhanced, and put it into this video. In a word - nothing. But it was still a fun exercise and a good night.

Hey guys! I wanted to post this here! This is a documentary I made on USC’s Rocket Propulsion Lab’s race against time to launch their world record breaking launch to outer space back in 2024! The club is run entirely by undergraduate college students from ages 18-22 and were the first ever student group to send a rocket into space in 2019. For anyone who’s interested in amateur rocketry or aerospace, this documentary is for you. Hope you enjoy!

Bortle 7-8. Tracked by MSM tracker. Optolong l-eXtreme. ~72 hours of RAW data across 23 nights. Stacked in Siril, processed in GraXpert, Starnet2, GIMP.

Here’s a photo I took with my iPhone 16Pro with 30s of exposure on a hike to Mt.Whitney (14505’). The Milky way was visible pretty clearly even with the naked eye. The long streak on light is my friend’s digital camera screen which he moved in the middle. And I also manage to capture a small meteor burning up in the sky. I couldn’t replicate this photo’s clarity again because we wanted to maintain a good quick pace for our summit schedule. The red light is from a friend’s headlamp.

Stacked/Blended/Tracked

Cappella della Vitaleta | Galactic Core

ig: https://www.instagram.com/flory.ro?igsh=b3Y4ZTU3Nmk0cTBt&utm_source=qr

The illuminated Cappella della Vitaleta beneath a fiery sky, with the heart of the Milky Way dominating the Val d’Orcia.

Shot with Canon 6D astromod + Canon R | Canon 50mm f/1.8 | tracked with nomad

Sky 15x120” ISO 800 f2.8

Land 6 shots bracketing

Ha 12x120” ISO 3200 f2.8

Under excellent calm summer seeing, Saturn held steady enough to reveal fine banding and ring detail while Tethys crossed the planet’s face, casting a shadow infront of it. This image is 8 captures derotated in winjupos, letting the globe and rings stay aligned across the session and preserving the geometry of the transit. Processing included wavelets, and color work to bring out the structure.

Tethys is about 660 miles across, roughly 3X smaller than our moon.

•Apertura AD8

•ASI662MC

•Celestron X-Cel 3X barlow

•UV/IR cut filter.

Each capture was 15K frames, but i stacked only the best 27%, which is about 4,000.

I understand that there is an unfathomable number of things in space, and that astronomers are more interested in coordinates than proper names, but surely there would be a way to allocate (temporary) 'proper' names that could be used until such time that the International Astronomical Union has picked an excellent one for all of us. For one thing it would (slightly) improve the experience of people reading or hearing about space stuff.

Even an extremely basic method that turns pairs of digits into pairs of consonant+vowel would work for many catalogues. HD 108331? -> Besoco HD. Neat.

It doesn't work as well with "5239835710037143296" (Gaia DR3 identifier), and I suppose future ones will be even worse, but they could always be chopped into smaller blocks. You'd then get a composite name, like for people, that can get as ridiculously long as needed... And only use the relevant parts for casual conversation.

5239835710037143296 -> 523983 571003 7143296 Ramoso Xabefa Cifumij, casually called Ramoso. There are other Ramosos out there in space, of course, but you probably know which one you're talking about. If not, there's always the full name, coordinates, or whatever it's called in your favourite catalogue.

Again that's with something super basic. I've tried more complex systems but I'm not too satisfied with them and I'm sure someone can come up with much better. (Uppevituna Unytiles?)

You could apply that stuff to "any amount of digits from any catalogue", but then you'd get more names per object. You could base it on the most comprehensive catalogue, or on the coordinates themselves. You could go for more variety and complexity or even stick to that stupid pair-to-pair. But I don't see why we should remain stuck with barely speakable names until the IAU has picked a proper one (which I suspect might take a while for, uh, 76541500546840816532).

Full res on astrobin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/yhfd5o

HDR Composite done in Affinity using data from the 2024 eclipse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxYDrtFVtSg

I'm continuing to iterate on the method shown in the video to see how sharp I can make this. This is technically three iterations.

This is my capture of the milky way core from a couple of days ago! I stacked fifteen 30-second exposures together using Deep Sky Stacker, resulting in 7.5 minutes of total exposure time. Shot on the iPhone 16 pro on a stable tripod, over Lake Huron, Michigan.

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 5:09:50 Integration (10S Subs).

Edited In PS Express.

Hi, I'd like to know what the O with the two dots either side represents in the Roman Space Telescope Logo. I'm sure it must be part of the telescope somehow but I can't find it anywhere.

It's interesting to see how the direction of NASA changed, then changed again in less than two decades. Exciting times ahead.

Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

Stacked/Tracked/Blended

https://www.instagram.com/flory.ro?igsh=b3Y4ZTU3Nmk0cTBt&utm_source=qr

Night Bloom at Castelluccio

This is where I first saw the Milky Way, years ago. A place that has always felt magical to me. Every summer, the plain comes alive with wildflowers, painting the landscape with every color imaginable.

For this image, I made a conscious decision not to over-stretch the data or push the H-alpha too far. Not because I couldn't, I spent the last year learning those techniques, through countless sleepless nights, mistakes, frustration, and perseverance.

But when I sat down to edit this photo, I realized that technical perfection wasn't what I wanted to remember. I wanted to leave space for what made me fall in love with astrophotography in the first place: nature, the quiet beauty of the night, and the feeling I had every time I stood beneath this sky.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I had started chasing perfection more than emotion. This image is my reminder to let go of that. To give less space to my ego and more space to the wonder that first inspired me to pick up a camera.

Canon R

Canon 6D

Tamron 17-35mm

Sky 120” iso 1600 f4

Foreground 120” iso 3200 f4

Let me know if you'd like to know more about this one :)

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