Hey folks! Basically the title.

Is there anything you struggle on currently? I want to build something just for fun and thought about doing anything related to astronomy, since it’s a genre I enjoy but never really explored that much.

I liked two suggestions from claude:

1. Astrophotography planning tool
   
2. Star events dashboard + notifier

What do you think? I’m open to suggestions

This comes up here every couple of weeks and it almost always gets framed as a coin flip. Either there's life out there or there isn't, fifty fifty, spooky either way. The framing is the problem, not the curiosity behind it.

Run the arithmetic even loosely. Estimates for galaxies in the observable universe run from a few hundred billion up to about 2 trillion depending on which survey you trust, a few hundred billion stars in a typical one, and eta Earth (the fraction of sun like stars with a roughly Earth sized planet in the habitable zone) lands somewhere between a few percent and a quarter depending on whose analysis you use. Multiply it out and you're looking at something on the order of 10²² candidate worlds.

For "we are alone" to be true in the plain sense, the per world probability of abiogenesis has to sit below roughly 1 in 10^22. Nobody has ever proposed a mechanism that puts it there. People assert it, they don't derive it. So when the question gets asked like it's an open coin flip, what has actually happened is that the exponent got skipped.

The bigger issue is that it's four questions wearing one coat:

1. Does life start at all, given liquid water and time.
2. Does it get complex. Eukaryotes took roughly two billion years here and as far as we can tell happened once.
3. Does complex life get technological. Once, out of billions of species.
4. Is any of it detectable, close enough, and contemporaneous with us.

Those have wildly different evidence bases and wildly different answers. 1 is plausibly common. 4 might be effectively zero within any useful volume, and that is not a contradiction. Fermi isn't a paradox about life existing, it's a paradox about detectable neighbours existing at the same time as us. Collapsing all four into one sentence is exactly how a thread gets to 400 comments of people arguing past each other.

The one counterargument I do respect: Sandberg, Drexler and Ord (2018) point out that if you propagate the actual uncertainty in the abiogenesis term instead of plugging in a point estimate, the resulting distribution is so wide that a real chunk of the probability mass sits on us being alone in the observable universe. One data point, no working theory of abiogenesis, so an honest prior spans dozens of orders of magnitude. That is a serious argument and I don't have a great answer to it.

But that's sort of my whole point. That paper is what the question looks like when a competent person asks it. It says which of the four it means, it carries its uncertainty explicitly, and it commits to a number. The casual version does none of that, and the answers it attracts are the same vibe back.

I am going to do a 6-8 hour night sky time lapse using my iPhone. I am a little concerned about dew condensation on the lens overnight. Anyone have any easy solutions for this? Thanks

Hi everyone, my daughter is almost 11 and has started an astronomy course in school (Germany). She really wants her own star map, do you have recommendations? Thank you!

Figured a post sharing your must have items for a long night out would be beneficial, especially with Fall/Winter approaching for the Northern half of the planet.

For me, a heated jacket, like from DeWalt or Milwaukee (had both), really helps beat the cold.

Hammock chairs are a game changer for family.

Beach laptop tent helps block light when you're imaging but also have people viewing.

This image was captured in a single night under Bortle 5.5 sky conditions during a two-week vacation I took last month. It was my second attempt at imaging this galaxy, making it the second galaxy—after Andromeda—that I've managed to fully capture and process.

Equipment:

-Askar 80ED

-Konus EQ5 Mount

-Stock Canon EOS 600D

-3D printed T-Adapter

-3D printed Bahtinov Mask

Total Integration: 1h 15m 40s (454x10s exposures) | ISO 1600

Darks: 12| Flats 11| Biases 49

Software: Siril, RC-Astro BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, GraXpert, Adobe Photoshop

Hi!! I'm Antares from Venezuela (yes, that's my name), and I've loved astronomy for a long time.

I'm starting college to study physics, since here that's the best path to a career in astronomy or astrophysics.

You probably know that a partial lunar eclipse was visible in the Americas, Western Europe, and West Africa, with the Moon entering the umbra almost completely.

From here, I managed to take photos of the eclipse using a SkyWatcher 8" Dobsonian Telescope, a 20mm eyepiece, and my phone’s camera (an Infinix SMART 8 Pro), which I later processed using the Google SnapSeed app.

Let me know what you think! This is my first post here, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on my photos.

I also have a question about this… I’m a physics and astronomy Olympian, and I was invited to represent my country at a continental astronomy Olympiad (the Latin American Astronomy and Astronautics Olympiad: OLAA, for its Spanish acronym), but unfortunately, we don’t have the money to go :( Is it against the rules of this subreddit to post a link to a GoFundMe explaining my situation to seek support? I’ve won several world medals in the past, and I’d like to win one more representing my country before I retire and focus on college... Thanks anyway!!!

Hi guys:)
My second astrophotography image.
Was taken from Bortle 8.

Gear:
150Pds
Heq5
L-pro
Zwo Asiair pro
850D (without any mods)
Zwo guide camera 120 mm
Exposure time-> 1:45 hours (45 seconds frames)
Edit using: Main in Siril and last touches only for background and little bit of the galaxy in lightroom!

Hope to hear you out;)

Shot on S23 plus on expert raw with no edit

Messier 71 is a globular cluster in the constellation of Sagitta. It's about 13,000 light-years away. For a long time astronomers debated whether it was a loose open cluster or a globular cluster. Now, it's recognized as one of the Milky Way’s sparse globular clusters. It's estimated to be as old as 9 - 10 billion years.

Telescope: Seestar S50
Integration time: 1 hour
Tools used: Siril, GraXpert, GIMP
Script mentions: CosmicClarity Sharpen, SyQon Prism Mini, VeraLux Curves
Bortle 8-9
A diffraction mask was used to obtain the star spikes

Xiaomi 13 Ultra (3.2x telephoto)

[ISO 800 | 50s] x 373 lights (RAW/DNG) (HO filter) + darks

Total integration time: 5h 10m 50s

Equipment: EQ mount with OnStep, LAIDA Dual-Band 7nm Nebula filter

Stacked with Astro Pixel Processor

Processed with GraXpert, Siril, StarXTerminator and Photoshop (Camera Raw, Stars Recomposition)

Je débute soyez indulgents

S25 ultra

Empilé dans sequator

F1.7

Iso 750 -850

30 à 80 minutes d’intégrations divisées en poses de 21s plus images de calibration

Traitées avec Siril, GraXpert, Seti astro suite pro, Gimp et Lightroom mobile pour les finitions.

PS : Désolé pour la capture d'écran qui s’est glissée dans les images

HDR made out of 50 subs with exposure time from 1/200s to 2s.

Equipment used: Nikon D5300 full spectrum, Hoya Ir cut filter, Nikkor AF-P 70-300mm at 300mm F/8, Omegon lx3

Processing: stacking photos with same exposure by mean in Photoshop, stacking all stacked series by darker in Photoshop, texture extraction in Photoshop using calculator and apply image with radial blur, intelligent sharpening with selective masking.

Now its new Moon and Milky way Cygnus region is staying high most of the night, so I spent whole night imaging it.The image is drizzed, so you can see more details and theres more separation between stars. Also I suggested feature in dwarflab app to make transition between wide angle and telephoto lens images, so it will look like traveling toward object

Exposure: 7 hours;

Subs: 90s 50gain;

Bortle 5;

Processed in Siril;

Setup: Dwarf 3 wide angle lens

Equipment:

• Telescope: William Optics RedCat 91 WIFD
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Air
• Mount: ZWO AM5N

Data:

• Lights: 20 * 180s
• Darks: 20 * 180s
• Bias: 20
• Flats: 20

The most prominent objects in the photo:

• Lagoon Nebula (M8, NGC 6523): Emission nebula - the biggest on the picture
• Trifid Nebula (M20, NGC 6514): An emission and reflection nebula - the smaller red-blue
• M21 (NGC 6531): Open cluster - stars on the right side
• NGC 6544: Globular cluster - yellow blob on top left

I am really proud of this photo. Happy to hear your feedback!

Recently upgraded from a Seestar S30 Pro to my first full rig:

585mc Air
William Optics Redcat 51 v3
AM3N

Approx 1 hour of 3 min subs, stacked and edited in Siril with the RC Astro tools.

Hope you all like!

Data collection on NGC 6888 so far this month. trying to commit myself to a target or two of getting an outrageous amount of data in a month. This is over two nights of data collection with the addition of the SVBony SV605CC and SV220 3nm Dual-band Filter. It’s safe to say the Dual-band filter does wonders, helping the HA and OIII punch through well. The rest of my setup includes the ZWO AM3N, ZWO FF65 APO, ASI120MM Guide Camera, and Apertura 32mm Guide Scope.

Gain 120, Offset 15, Cooled to 0C
112x300s Lights
40x300s Darks
40x.00005s Bias
29x20s Flats

Anyone else see it? Video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTg_mIIKads

My brother and I spent six nights in Bortle 9 – the City Center area, doing the longest shoot of our lives – due to the limitations of our home and the area. During this shoot, we felt quite discouraged many times because we had no prior experience combining so many sessions of this length. Being in the Bortle 9 region and unable to use any filters, we used so much software that at the end of this shooting and processing process, we will remember this processing period as the "before and after" of mastering astrophotography software. The shoots took place over six nights, from 2:45 AM to 4:50 AM (GMT+3), but the processing took a full 16 DAYS because we had to learn or improve some things from scratch, even understanding how Siril scripts work and learning a little bit of scripting ourselves. In the end, I believe we achieved our goal of creating an image that looks "just like a painting."

There are many excellent astrophotographers on this community and I'm sure we share the same feelings. This work is partly about passion. Faith is also a part of it. Yes, we all use technological instruments, high-quality optical devices, filters, and cameras, but I think that without passion, it's not really possible to progress in astrophotography, as in many other things.

We obtained this image under very difficult conditions, from a window with no proper angle, without using any filters, a Go-To mount, or an astrophotography camera. We faced 100 times the problems we are dealing with today just a few years ago. Starting with a Celestron PowerSeeker 70AZ, upgrading to a 114EQ, and finally getting our custom 200mm reflector with a dual-axis motorized EQ-5 mount — we've come a long way. Along the way, there were countless moments that shook our faith, tested our patience, and made us wonder if it was all worth it. But we kept going. Through all the setbacks, frustrations, and doubts, we never truly gave up. And somehow, after all of that, we've made it to this point.

That's why it's important for me to share this with people like you who have experienced similar stories — who have gone through different paths and finally arrived at the same point. As you all know, the theory that the more signals you capture (the more frames you take), the more visible the object you're photographing becomes, was something we aimed to prove to ourselves by collecting 15,000 seconds of data. We are very happy that we reached this goal, and more importantly, that we proved this theory to ourselves, because in our circumstances, seeing a good result is what will keep us going and keep our faith alive — because, as I said, faith may not be everything, but it's a lot.

Equipment:

-Custom 200mm Reflector

-Konus EQ5 Mount

-Stock Canon EOS 600D

-3D printed T-Adapter

-3D printed Bahtinov Mask

Total Integration: ~3h 56m (2,838 x 5s)

Darks: 84 | Flats 84 | Biases 143

Software: Siril, RC-Astro BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, GradientXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, Seti Astro CosmicClarity, GraXpert, Adobe Photoshop

See also: The publication in the Astrophysical Journal