Astrophotography
Welcome to !astrophotography!
We are Lemmy's dedicated astrophotography community!
If you want to see or post pictures of space taken by amateurs using amateur level equipment, this is the place for you!
If you want to learn more about taking astro photos, check out our wiki or our discord!
Please read the rules before you post! It is your responsibility to be aware of current rules. Failure to be aware of current rules may result in your post being removed without warning at moderator discretion.
Rules
- I | Real space images only.
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Astrophotography refers to images of astronomical objects or phenomena exclusively.
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~~Images that show objects or people below the Kármán Line (100km) will be removed.~~ We won't be enforcing this rule for now, but as the community grows eventually we will split and have a separate space for just landscape astro.
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Images must be an accurate representation of a real astronomical object.
- II | Original and Amateur Content Only
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Image posts can only be images that you have captured and processed yourself, or discussion about capturing and/or processing your own images.
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Images acquired from public sources, professional observatories, or other professional services are not allowed.
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If you have done a drastic alteration or reprocessing of a prior submission, you may repost your edit - but only after a minimum of one week has passed.
- III | Post Types
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Image posts are to link directly to the image, not to landing pages, personal galleries, blogs, or professional sites. Link to these in the comments. (AstroBin and Imgur, are allowed)
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Questions are welcome here for the time being.
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Links to blogs, articles or external websites should be interesting and promote discussion about amateur astrophotography.
- IV | Titles
- All image posts should just include include the name of the object being photographed. Extra info such as equipment, it being your first image, or other information should go in a comment along with your acquisition info. Please see this page for more details.
If your post is removed, try reposting with a different title. Don't hesitate to message the mods if you still have questions!
- V | Acquisition and Processing Information
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All submitted images must include acquisition and processing details as a top-level comment. All posts without this information may be given a warning, and if not updated will be removed.
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This includes the telescope, mount, camera, accessories, and any other pieces of equipment you used to capture the image.
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You must also include processing details, i.e. the programs you used and a general rundown of the workflow/processes you used within those programs. “Processed in Photoshop” is not enough.
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NGC 4490 is a galaxy colliding with the smaller NGC 4485 galaxy, and both are about 25 million light years away. This image was taken with a monochrome camera through filters for luminance (all visible light), red, green, blue, and Hydrogen-alpha (656nm), which were combined into a color image. The Hydrogen-alpha was combined with red (described below) to make the HaLRGB image. The pink Ha regions are star forming nebulae within the galaxies. This got cropped out of the final pic, but I ended getting some gorgeous diffraction spikes on this star near the edge of the full FOV
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
Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding
Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 27 hours 37 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)
Ha - 128x360"
Lum - 464x60"
Red - 152x60"
Green - 150x60"
Blue - 123x60"
Flats- 30 per filter
24 JimmyFlats per broadband filter
Capture Software:
PixInsight Processing:
BatchPreProcessing (with premade JimmyFlats)
StarAlignment
Blink
ImageIntegration
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
DynamicCrop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
Luminance:
BlurXTerminator
ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear
RGB:
ChannelCombinaiton to combine monochrome R, G, B stacks into color image
SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)
HSV Repair
making clean Ha
Nonlinear
ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring HaRGB image nonlinear
MLT for large scale chrominance noise reduction
shitloads of curve transformations to adjust lightness, contrast, saturation, etc (with various luminance and star masks)
slight SCNR to remove some greens
LRGBCombination with stretched Luminance
DeepSNR
more curves
ColorSaturation to slightly desaturate the Ha regions (they were very pink compared to the rest of the galaxy
slight noisexterminator
LocalHistogramEqualization
even more curves
Resample to 75%
DynamicCrop onto just the galaxy
annotation
I’ll say it again, thanks for all the details.
I couldn’t agree more, thank you for sharing so much information!