Thanks! We won’t know the results for a couple weeks. The movie was dogshit!

Bad movie night with some friends tonight, and then absolutely nothing the rest of the weekend (we’re watching Adam Sandler’s first movie, Going Overboard). Just gotta make it through this mornings exam

NGC 5634 is a globular cluster about 80k lightyears away from us. It’s pretty small compared to other globs like M13. I only spent an hour on this while waiting for other targets to come up the last time I was at a dark site. Captured on June 7th, 2024 from a Bortle 3 zone (Deerlick Astronomy Village)

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 1hour 3 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)

• Lum - 24x90"

• Red - 6x90"

• Green - 6x90"

• Blue - 6x90"

• Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

Luminance:

• BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

RGB:

• ChannelCombinaiton to combine monochrome R, G, B stacks into color image

• BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

• Curves to saturate it a little

Nonlinear:

• LRGBCombination with stretched L as luminance

• DeepSNR Noise reduction

• Invert > SCNR > invert > SCNR to remove some greens and magentas

• Several CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc.

• HistogramTransformations

• More curves

• DynamicCrop in on the clustert

• Resample to 80%

• Annotation

Bye, Bob :-(

Only 7 years ago!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU7FuAswPW0

They transmit T cruzi (Chagas’ disease), which can cause heart failure

The second stage engine cover seemed to get ‘over inflated’ at T+4:07. And you can definitely see it’s in a lower orbit on the final screen right after SECO

I love procrastinating on processing my images! I got set up early at a dark site last month and decided to shoot the sun while it was still up. There were a shitload of sunspots, including AR3697 in the bottom right. This sunspot group was the one that gave us the wonderful aurora back in May (back when it was known as AR3664)

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Moonlite Autofocuser

• Astrozap BAADER AstroSolar Density 5 filter

Acquisition:

• Green filter - 5000 frames at gain 139 and 0.324ms exposure

Capture Software:

• Captured using sharpcap

Processing:

• Stacked the best 25% of frames in Autostakkert, 2X resample and autosharpened

• Colorized using curves in Photoshop

• More lightness/Hue Adjustments

• Astrosurface wavelets to remove some grid artifacts from stacking

• STF applied in pixinsight

• Annotatation

I love procrastinating on processing my images! I got set up early at a dark site last month and decided to shoot the sun while it was still up. There were a shitload of sunspots, including AR3697 in the bottom right. This sunspot group was the one that gave us the wonderful aurora back in May (back when it was known as AR3664)

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Moonlite Autofocuser

• Astrozap BAADER AstroSolar Density 5 filter

Acquisition:

• Green filter - 5000 frames at gain 139 and 0.324ms exposure

Capture Software:

• Captured using sharpcap

Processing:

• Stacked the best 25% of frames in Autostakkert, 2X resample and autosharpened

• Colorized using curves in Photoshop

• More lightness/Hue Adjustments

• Astrosurface wavelets to remove some grid artifacts from stacking

def going to be using this for any of my future planetary projects. Shoutout to Tom on the discord!

• STF applied in pixinsight

• Annotatation

RIP my home button whenever my SE3 bites the dust

Wasn’t expecting much with the last night’s geomagnetic storm, but seeing the aurora come in on the camera was definitely an “oh shit” moment for me and my wife, especially when it got overexposed. The initial burst in the gif was very noticeable to the naked eye, despite our light pollution. Sadly it died down a bunch, but seems to have come back (although not as strong) after 3am (video timestamp is in UTC). Tonight definitely wont be as strong, but I’m hoping the camera might pick something up on another timelapse. Captured on May 10th, 2024 from Atlanta, GA

(probably) Better quality version on youtube

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• ASI290mc + the all sky lens it comes with

Acquisition:

• looped 15" exposures at gain 160

Capture Software:

• Sharpcap

Processing:

• just PIPP to debayer and handbrake to convert it

This is already the highest res (at least in terms of being zoomed in), but here’s the entire uncropped photo

Finally done with classes and I got some time to at least star processing my pics. Gonna be a while before I figure out all the HDR stuff, so here’s a pic of the prominences about 10 seconds before C3. It was absolutely nutty seeing them naked eye during the eclipse, and visually through my other telescope. Captured on April 8th, 2024 from Sikeston, MO.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• Canon T3i (Ha modded)

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition:

• Single 1/4000" exposure at ISO 100

Capture Software:

• Eclipse Orchestrator Free for automating the capture sequence

• NINA for controlling the mount and autofocuser

Photoshop processing:

• Crop, and some minor adjustments to exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, and blacks, and slight S curve

I’m still kinda upset that it clouded over at the last minute during the 2017 eclipse. I had my camera set up to take a bunch of exposures for HDR throughout totality, and this was really the only one that turned out. Hopefully it’ll be clear this time and I can get a proper HDR image, but I’m not looking forward to driving 6+ hours back home (not including eclipse traffic).

Also for anyone else who saw the last eclipse, did the dumb lizard part of your brain freak out a little when you saw stars out at 2pm or was it just me?

Kinda as a joke I designed a house for astrophotography in sweethome 3D. You can also export the whole 3D house model into unity and upload it to VRChat to actually walk around inside it

https://youtu.be/Gco_OVsT3Wo

There are USB powered dew heaters on amazon for pretty cheap, and work just fine for small lenses. I think I got mine for $15 a few years ago, and I already had a battery pack laying around. In a pinch you could use some non-reusable iron oxide hand warmers rubber banded to the lens, which could give a couple hours of warmth.

In terms of trackers the cheapest I’ve seen is the Nyx tracker at $130, but I know some people have managed to DIY them for a little cheaper. I’ve never used one so I cant speak for how well it works, but I imagine you’ll at least be able to get some longer exposure times if it’s polar aligned well.

https://github.com/Balackburn/Apollo

You’ll have to install AltStore (or Sideloady) on your computer + phone to resign the app each week (this can happen automatically if they’re on the same wifi network). You can make your own personal API key at https://old.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ (It’s limited to 100 requests per 10 mins, which you wont run into browsing by yourself). Also as long as you moderate a subreddit (I think even if it’s just an empty one you make), NSFW content wont be blocked on the API.

Also while you’re sideloading, I’d highly recommend uYouPlus for a better youtube app

It’s at least possible to sideload Apollo and use your own API key for it.

Well I guess that’s one way to be a smart-ass