Astrophotography

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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.

Astrophotography refers to images of astronomical objects or phenomena exclusively.
~~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.
Images must be an accurate representation of a real astronomical object.
See this page for more details

II | Original and Amateur Content Only

Image posts can only be images that you have captured and processed yourself, or discussion about capturing and/or processing your own images.
Images acquired from public sources, professional observatories, or other professional services are not allowed.
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

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)
Questions are welcome here for the time being.
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

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.
This includes the telescope, mount, camera, accessories, and any other pieces of equipment you used to capture the image.
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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lefty7283

The Gamma Cygni Nebula (live.staticflickr.com)

submitted 1 week ago by lefty7283 to c/astrophotography

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[–] lefty7283 1 points 1 week ago

Still shooting in Cygnus...

Though I think IC1318/γ Cyg can be used to describe most of the nebulosity around the star Sadr, stellarium has it directly over the bright nebula in this image. Overall I'd consider it an improvement over my last go at it back in 2020. Captured over 12 nights from Oct-Nov 2024 from a bortle 9 zone.

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-290mc for guiding
Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 25 hours 40 minutes (Camera at -15°C), unity gain

Ha - 50x600"
Oiii - 57x600"
Sii - 47x600"
Darks- 30
Flats- 30 per filter

Capture Software:

Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.

PixInsight Preprocessing:

BatchPreProcessing
StarAlignment
Blink
ImageIntegration per channel
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Dynamic Crop
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

Narrowband Linear:

Blur and NoiseXTerminator
made SHO image and extracted stars to be processed separately
StarXterminator to completely remove stars from each Ha, Oiii, and Sii image
HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

Stars only image:

SpectrophotometricColorCalibration (narrowband working mode)
HSV repair
arcsinhstretch
scnr > invert > scnr > invert to remove greens and magentas
HistogramTransformation
(combined with starless pic later on)

Nonlinear:

PixelMath to combine monochrome Ha Oiii and Sii images into a color image with SHO --> RGB, respectively
slight SCNR (bright areas protected with Ha mask)
Some curves to adjust colors
LRGBCombination using stretched Ha as luminance (accidentally left that Ha mask on from earlier so it applied more to the bright parts, and honestly turned out nicer than applying the Ha luminance to the entire image)
Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc
DeepSNR
MLT for small scale chrominance noise reduction
DarkStructureEnhance script
LocalHistogramEqualization
more curves
invert > slight scnr (masked) > invert to remove some background magentas
even more curves
Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier

This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

mtf(.005,

mtf(.995,Stars)+

mtf(.995,Starless))
Resample to 65%
Annotation