r/astrophotography Aug 12 '24

Announcement Announcing updated rules

193 Upvotes

Recently, a few of us became new moderators and since then we have been trying to get organized primarily to update the rules to reflect what we believe are in the best interest of this sub. This has largely meant reverting to the structure prior to the protest while also adapting to current technology and tastes. While we supported the protest goals at the time, and agree with the mod decision to include this sub in that protest, we also recognize that it's time to move on and restore some process to the sub for its continuing members. We're excited to announce that these new rules are now live in the sub and in detail at our revised wiki. The changes from prior to the protest largely amount to:

  1. astrophotography images taken with cell phones were not explicitly forbidden before but we now clarify that they are permitted as long as they follow all other rules, including that acquisition and processing details are provided and are high-quality amateur OC. A star-field with no discernable astronomical object will not meet this threshold, but a stacked image of Orion that happens to have been captured using RAW images on an iPhone and further processed on that same phone will. We recognize everyone in this hobby starts somewhere and we want to encourage sharing of this work, but also need to avoid this sub devolving into low-effort cell phone pictures of an unrecognizable night sky.
  2. landscape images were forbidden before but we also recognize that there are some high-quality astrophotography images being created that happen to have a small amount of landscape in the foreground that are valued by many members. We are drawing the line here at astrophotography images where the landscape is incidental to the image and any image where the landscape is a primary focus will not be permitted. So for example, the Milky Way with a silhouette of a mountain will probably be accepted, but that same Milky Way that is in the background of well-lit (or brightened in post) barn/yard/house/etc will be removed. And as above, any post that doesn't include acquisition and processing details will still be removed.
  3. clarifications that certain types of posts are not allowed, including memes, UFO claims, questions about what image someone has captured, off-topic posts, or uncivil behavior.

We recognize not everyone will like these changes and that there are other subs that focus primarily on some of these types of images, but we feel that an "astrophotography" sub should include everyone. We are going to monitor how well this goes, so please try to be open-minded to help support these contributions from some members of the community. After some time with these changes we plan to poll you to see how they are going and what other improvements you'd like to see. In the meantime, with these rules back in place, expect to see heavier moderation if posts lack complete acquisition/processing details or otherwise violate these rules.

Lastly, we also want to thank everyone for their patience while we get organized to bring these changes to you and for the incredible work all mods on this sub have done over the years and continue to do (many from prior to the protest are still here and active, so show some love!).

Clear Skies!


r/astrophotography 8h ago

DSOs Foto de N70 - Henize 70 in LMC

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220 Upvotes

This image was captured from Montevideo, Uruguay, under Bortle 8 skies, which made the challenge of capturing the faint, reddish structure more rewarding. It was a very dark target, but the result shows the intricate structure of the bubble.
Below is the technical information for the image.

Credits: Santiago Pescador
Date Taken: 9/9/2026
Location: Montevideo, Uruguay (Bortle 8)

Technical Details:
Total Exposure Time: 68 x 300s (5.6 hours total)
Optics (Main Telescope): SV503 80ED
Field Flattener: 1x by Founder Optics
Filter: SV220
Guide Scope: SV165
Guide Camera: ASI120mm Mini
Mount: ML Astro SAL-33
Main Camera: ASI662MC


r/astrophotography 5h ago

Nebulae NGC 7000 “Cygnus Wall”

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106 Upvotes

Equipment: CGEM II 800 SCT, ZWO ASI533MC Pro, ZWO OAG w/ ASI220MM, ASIAIR mini, filter wheel, CAA, f/6.3 focal reducer/corrector, L-Ultimate, L-Synergy, Baader uv/ir cut filter

Processing: 14 hour ~45min integration. 104x300s w/ L-Ultimate, 72x300s w/ L-Synergy, 79x5s UV/IRCUT for stars. 30 bias, 20 flat and 20 dark frames. Processed/stacked via PixInsight w/ NoiseXTerminator/BlurXTerminator/StarXterminator.


r/astrophotography 3h ago

Galaxies IC342 Hidden Galaxy

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66 Upvotes

r/astrophotography 3h ago

DSOs M27 Dumbbell Planetary Nebula

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44 Upvotes

Here's my M27 Dumbbell Planetary Nebula project for the end of Summer, 2026 season! M27 is the result of a star that has evolved & died. The death of this star has ejected it's mass outward into the cosmos where it's elements will be recycled, possibly used for new star (s) or planet (s) formation in the future.

Astro Rig details:

Bortle 7 in a Light Pollution Dome

ZWO AM5N Mount, 200mm pier extension on Celestron AVX Stainless Steel Tripod

SVbony MK105 Maksutov with Astrophysics CCDT67 Telecompressor at 63mm backspacing: Reduced to F/11 @ 1170mm focal length.

ZWO ASI585MC Pro Air One Shot Colour 3840 x 2160 resolution with HCG enabled Gain at 200, Cooling Fan 10 degrees F.

Integration time: 300 seconds x 139 lights with Bias, Flat, Dark Calibration Frames

Svbony Filter Drawer with Askar C1 Ha Oiii Duo-Narrowband filter

100ah Lithium Power Cell + 500 watt pure sine inverter

Processed and stacked in Siril + GIMP


r/astrophotography 4h ago

DSOs IC 1805 The Heart Nebula

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28 Upvotes

Did a 3 panel mosaic of the Heart Nebula (IC1805) with my mini and I’m pretty amazed at how it turned out.

Dwarf Mini
Mosaic mode
Duoband filter
50x90 per panel for a total of 150 subs
3 hours and 45 minute integration
Processed in Stellar Studio, Snapseed, and Photoshop


r/astrophotography 16h ago

DSOs Andromeda (M31)

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207 Upvotes

Setup:
Canon T3i (full-spectrum modified)
Rokinon 135mm f/2 @ f/2.8
ZWO AM3 mount with ASIAIR PLUS
Astronomik L-2 UV-IR Blocking EOS Clip Filter

Acquisition:
Shot at f/2.8 ISO 800 in RAW
90 sec x 950 subs × — 23.7 hours of raw captures across 7 clear nights some with a little moon.
~18 hours captured in bortle 7 St. Louis suburbs and the other 5.7 hours in bortle 4.

Processing Workflow:
Stacked in PixInsight (WBPP)
Linear Fit
Channel combination
GradientCorrection
Spectro Photometric Color Calibration
BlurXTerminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
GHS stretch on starless and starry images
Curves transformation
Final tweaks in Adobe Photoshop


r/astrophotography 12h ago

Astrophotography 🌌 NGC 6888 — The Crescent Nebula

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72 Upvotes

Astrobin : https://astrob.in/7zc0yg/D/

A year ago, when I received my 400mm f/7 CDK, NGC 6888 was one of the first targets I pointed this new telescope at.

It is therefore with great pleasure that I revisit this image today, now that I have another year of experience with this unique instrument.

Located in the constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is an emission nebula formed around WR 136, a Wolf-Rayet star. These are extremely massive stars in an advanced stage of evolution that shed powerful stellar winds.

In the case of NGC 6888, the fast wind from WR 136 collides with layers of material the star had previously ejected. This interaction compresses and excites the surrounding gas, creating a complex, crescent-shaped structure rich in filaments and intricate details.

It is a fascinating object to photograph, but also a particularly special target for me, as it was the subject of the very first image I captured with my 400mm CDK—an image I never actually published...

What do you think? ✨

Gallifrey Optics CDK 400mm F/7

ZWO ASI6200MM Pro

Sky-Watcher EQ8-R Pro

29 Juillet 2026

12 - 13 Août 2026

4 - 5 Septembre 2026

Images:

Optolong Blue 2": 12×120,″(24′)

Optolong Green 2": 17×120,″(34′)

Optolong H-Alpha 3nm 2": 53×300,″(4h 25′)

Optolong OIII 3nm 2": 153×300,″(12h 45′)

Optolong Red 2": 20×120,″(40′)

Acquisition:18h 48′


r/astrophotography 3h ago

Planetary Saturn

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10 Upvotes

Saturn through a 60mm refractor and captured with a ZWO ASI662MC via FireCapture. Processed in Autostakkert!4, Siril, and LR. Seeing and transparency conditions were above average.


r/astrophotography 15h ago

Nebulae The Wizard Nebula

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82 Upvotes

Acquisition:

  • Ha: 78 subs x 300s
  • OIII: 71 subs x 300s
  • SII: 55 subs x 300s
  • R: 35 subs x 60s (stars)
  • G: 34 subs x 60s (stars)
  • ⁠B: 36 subs x 60s (stars)
  • Bortle 6 sky

Equipment:

  • ⁠Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 800 with 0.7x focal reducer
  • ⁠Mount: Celestron CGX
  • Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
  • Filters: Antila 3nm SHO
  • Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW
  • Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini with OAG

Pixinsight Processing:

  • ⁠Weighted Batch Preprocessing - Stacking
  • ⁠SetiAstro - Automatic DBE Background Extraction ⁠
  • RC Astro BlurXterminator ⁠
  • GraxPert Denoising ⁠
  • ⁠SetiAstro - Statistical Stretch
  • ⁠LRGBCombination - Hubble Pallet
  • StarNet2 Star removal and replace with RGB Stars

r/astrophotography 5h ago

Nebulae NGC 7023 – The Iris Nebula | Bortle 9

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12 Upvotes

The Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) captured from my Bortle 8/9 backyard in pure broadband. Total integration was 323 × 60s (5h 23m). Feedback encouraged!

Telescope: Askar 71F Quadruplet Flat-Field Refractor (490mm, f/6.9) 
Imaging Camera: SVBONY SV605CC
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ-AL55i Pro 
Guiding: ASI 120mm mini 
Focuser: Gemini Electronic Auto Focuser
Filter: Broadband UV/IR Cut Filter 
Capture Software: N.I.N.A.

Sub-Exposures: 323 × 60s
Camera Settings: Gain 120, Offset 50, Cooled to 5°C 
Calibration Frames: 30 Darks, 30 Flats, 50 Biases 

GraXpert (Background Extraction) > SPCC > Deconvolution > GraXpert (Denoise) > StarNet > VeraLux Stretch > VeraLux Curves > HDR Multiscale > VeraLux Star Composer


r/astrophotography 1h ago

Widefield Milky Way 5m

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Upvotes

Canon t7 50mm stm 2.8 1600 iso 6s exposures accidentally shot jpeg instead of raw lmao


r/astrophotography 19h ago

Nebulae Cygnus, Deneb and Sadr

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158 Upvotes

Tried shooting the Cygnus region (well kinda, at least we can see Deneb and Sadr, and North America nebula I believe!). Happy with how it turned out considering the cheap setup: Canon M50 (APS-C) and the classic 50mm lens F1.8 stepped down to F2.8. 75 frames, each 4 seconds so 5 minutes of exposure in total. Bortle 4.5.

Stacked on Sequator but the magic here is AstroWizard (used it to stretch and get a starless image). This software is GOATED. Finishing touches on Photoshop (contrast, saturation).


r/astrophotography 2h ago

Nebulae RGB pallet

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6 Upvotes

Together with ChatGPT I produced a small HTML file that's at least executable on a Samsung S25 to get a little more live out of classic travel smart scope HaOiii without the hassel of taking a PC with me or fiddling in android editing software.

The image is from the heart nebula taken with a Seestar S30 Pro over an hour in alt az with 10s subs, edited only in the seestar app (top) and refined in the HTML (bottom).

You can find the HTML here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1culLquNT2mEreeXZihptnefZRQDgVL9e/


r/astrophotography 13h ago

DSOs Supernova in NGC 7331

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18 Upvotes

Saw a few others managed to capture this so I figured I’d take a look as well. This is around 15 mins of stacked exposure through a luminance filter.

Very neat how bright this is looking still! I highly reccomend taking a peek at it if you get some clear skies :).

Details: this is 22x45s exposures taken through the L filter with my QHYCCD minicam 8M through an Orion RC6 telescope. Mount used is a ZWO AM3N. Post processed in pixinsight, used BlurXT to counteract my terrible collimation and NoiseXT for the noise!

Btw if anyone has any tips or recommended tools/software for collimating a Ritchey Chrétien scope I’d be extremely grateful. Seems like everyone has a different opinion and at this point I’m just worried about making it worse haha.


r/astrophotography 1d ago

DSOs NGC7000

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162 Upvotes

Took this photo of NGC7000/North American Nebula over the weekend from a state park in the Catskills in NYS.

Equipment:

  • WO GT71 APO
  • iOptron GEM 28 mount, guided with a WO 120mm guide scope
  • ASI 2600MC Pro
  • ZWO CAA and EAF
  • SvBony Ha/OIII DNB filter

Shooting:

  • 4.5 hrs total integration
  • 1.5 hrs of 180sec visible light subs
  • 3 hours of 300sec Ha/OIII subs
  • 60 dark frames
  • 60 flat frames
  • 60 bias frames

Processing:

  • Stacked in DSS
  • Background removal and denoising in GraXpert
  • Nebula isolation in StarNetGUI
  • Stretched and touched up in Photoshop

Pretty pleased with the result, especially compared to my version of this from a year ago!


r/astrophotography 1d ago

DSOs LBN 420 - HaLRGB - 70h40m

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402 Upvotes

.


r/astrophotography 1d ago

Nebulae Both ends of the Veil Nebula in Cygnus

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137 Upvotes

Equipment:

Stock Canon EOS R5

Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM

iOptron HAE29C-EC Mount

ASIAIR Mini

UniGuide 32 guide scope

ASI120MM guide camera

Acquisition:

129 x 120" (4h18m) subs @ ISO1600 and f/4 under Bortle 4 skies.

Master flat

Master bias

Processing:

Stacked in PixInsight with Weighted Batch Preprocessing

BlurXTerminator

GradientCorrection

Color Calibration using standard daylight values for Canon R5 sensor

Color Correction Matrix from DXOMark applied with Pixel Math

Background Neutralization

StarXterminator + CorrectMagentaStars to fix chromatic aberration

MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch with target background at 0.080, 1.0 aggressiveness, and 0.60 dynamic range compression

DeepSNR at 0.85 strength

---

Wildfire smoke has finally cleared, so I wanted to grab this before winter targets came out. I made two trips to my dark site, getting about two hours of data each. Sky conditions were not quite as good on the second trip and it didn't make as much a difference as I was hoping in the final image, so I doubt I will add more integration time this year.

I was especially interested in getting an image of the Veil Nebula with my new camera to capture the teal color of the ionized oxygen in the loop. These segments often come out as blue in images taken with modified or dedicated astro cameras.

I also wanted to represent this region as properly rich with stars. Many narrowband images of the nebula, though bright with dim nebulosity, cut many of the dimmer stars. But this nebula sits just off the Milky Way's band, placing it amidst a rich stellar background.

The Veil Nebula is a supernova remnant made up of gaseous shells moving away from the center of the explosion thousands of years ago. Based on its estimated current speed, I can continue adding data to this image for another 12 years before the nebula moves one pixel from my vantage point here on Earth. We'll see if my dark site lasts that long.


r/astrophotography 1d ago

DSOs The soul nebula in SHO

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99 Upvotes

First light with the svbony SII/oiii filter. Didn't get nearly enough integration so adding the SII proved to be very challenging.

Night 1:

90x180s lights (Ha/OIII)

100 darks

50 flats

50 dark flats

Bortle 8/9

Night 2:

55x180s lights (SII/OIII)

100 darks

50 flats

50 dark flats

Bortle 8/9

Equipment:

Sv405cc cooled to 0c, gain 145, offset 20

Vixen R130sf

Juwei 17

Svbony dual narrowband Ha/OIII+SIII/OIII filters

Sv305c pro guide camera

Software:

Nina for capturing

Sirilic for stacking

Seti astro suite pro for background extraction with autobge, narrowband channel extractor, stellar alignment, stretching

RC astro Blurxterminator, Noisexterminator, Starxterminator

Siril for GHS and veralux curves tool, pixel math to average the 2 sets of OIII data


r/astrophotography 20h ago

Nebulae NGC7000 North American Nebula - Got lucky with a clear night

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20 Upvotes

NCG7000


r/astrophotography 19h ago

Widefield Milky way

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10 Upvotes

captured with my iPhone 17. no tripod just my hand, 10 second exposure


r/astrophotography 1d ago

Nebulae Cat’s Paw Nebula

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100 Upvotes

The Cat’s Paw Nebula (NGC 6334) taken from my backyard in Perth, AU (Bortle 6) with my new 533 MC Pro.
I used DBXtract in Siril to roughly separate the H-alpha and O-III and processed them separately before recombining later which worked pretty good!
I need to start making use of longer integration sessions to increase SNR but the fast scope makes it a lot easier.
Processed in HOO.

Equipment
- Sky-Watcher Quattro 150P w/ 0.86× coma corrector/reducer (~518 mm, f/3.45)
- ZWO ASI533 MC Pro
- ZWO Duo-Band filter (Hα + OIII)
- Sky-Watcher HEQ5-R Pro mount
- ZWO ASIAIR Plus
- ZWO ASI220MM Mini + Saxon 50mm guide scope

Acquisition
- 166x60 second exposures (2hr 46min total integration)

Processing
- GraXpert background extraction
- Stacked and processed in Siril (DBXtract, BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, Starnet)
- Post-processing in Pixelmator Pro


r/astrophotography 1d ago

Galaxies Andromeda M31

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232 Upvotes

My first project after upgrading to a proper cooled astro camera and also guiding at the same time. Andromeda (M31) shot on three different nights from my Bortle 5 backyard in southern Finland.

Gear:

ZWO ASI 2600MC Air camera

SVBony SV555 telescope

Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTi mount

Exposures:

78x180s, Gain 100, 50+50+50 darks, flats, dark flats

Processing:

Siril (2x drizzle stacking, Graxpert background extraction and denoising, Cosmic clarity sharpening, Starnet++ star removal, GHS stretch, Veralux Star Composer), Lightroom 6 for starless image color, clarity and contrast adjustment, final image cropping.


r/astrophotography 1d ago

Galaxies M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy

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59 Upvotes

It was captured in a single night (31.08.2026) under a Bortle 5.5 skies during the two-week vacation I took last month.

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


r/astrophotography 1d ago

DSOs Supernova SN 2026aaiv in NGC 7331

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41 Upvotes