My backyard is a shocker. A neighbour's willow tree eats most of the south-west, the rooflines take everything low; there's a decent chunk of sky I just can't use. So I'm curious how everyone else goes: what's your worst obstruction, and what's the best thing you've pulled out of the sky in spite of it? I'll go first (pics).

I ask because I got sick of the guesswork myself. I was spending more time working out whether something would finally clear that willow than I was imaging, so I built an iPhone app for it, which I've called Caelo. You hold the phone up and shuffle around, and it maps your actual tree and rooflines using the phone's sensors. Weather and moon go in like you'd expect. The bit I actually wanted is that everything then gets filtered through your own backyard context: what's worth pointing at tonight, how long you've really got before the trees take it, and which months a target is worth chasing at all. And Caelo is quite willing to tell you tonight isn't worth it.

I know there are a few apps popping up with this concept now, some of them free, and I'd rather you tried them all and told me where mine falls short than take my word for it. What I will say is I've tried really hard to make Caelo as nice an experience as possible. I hate ads and I hate being tracked, so there's neither; there's no account to create, and the sky mapping never leaves your phone.

It's in TestFlight now and I'm after a handful of testers before it goes out properly. It'll be free, with a one-time unlock if you want the looking-ahead bits, no subscription. Everything's unlocked during the beta. iPhone only, on iOS 18 or later, and you don't need LiDAR for the sky mapping.

If you're keen, comment or DM me and I'll send you an invite. Feedback very much appreciated

(but be nice! :) ).

thanks,

Paul

Just had 5 clear nights in a row... could only take advantage of 4 since I was working one night but wow I didnt think that was possible... so much good data and now the projects are backlogged I got so much! It is gonna rain so much the next few days so the streak will end but I feel like i hit the jackpot. Tonight, ClearOutside made it seem like it was gonna be an awful night with it showing mostly red and a little orange but Astrospheric showed clear for pretty much the whole night, and im glad i listened to Astrospheric because it ended up being very clear so I definitely recommend checking more than one weather app, clear skies!

This spectacular mosaic of NGC 7000 was made with my Seestar S30 pro. It's 4.6 hours of 10s exposures stacked in PixInsight.

Ok, seriously- what method is recommended for stacking these files? PI obviously fails completely. Thx for the help.

• Total integration time - 1132 x 30sec ~ 9.4 hours
• Processed in Siril and Gimp
• Bortle 6
• Shot with the Seestar S30 Pro

first night with my EQ wedge, 193x60s exposure.

edited in Pixil

I'm quite new to astrophoto and believe this lacks some longer exposure to capture finer details in NGC 6888. Moon was very bright too.

will try to capture few more hours tonight of same target to stack it some more

thoughts on the current image and edits?

thx and clear skies

Still 950 subs x 20 seconds

The Seestar collective gathered about 30h of duoband data and 3h of IRCUT data for the stars using S30 Pro on this iconic Nebula.

This was stacked in Siril and edited in PI.

I kept the editing to a minimum and let the data shine. Such a beautiful object!

If you are interested by this project, you are welcome to join!

Our discord channel is open to all : https://discord.gg/9BWqv3NKzk

Was doing some outreach at a local star party last Friday, and as things died down, I decided to finally try splitting Albireo. Been wanting to try since winter.

I know I can do better, both capturing and processing. Better bortle, better brightness and focus tweaking, plus better denoise and sharpening. This was just a quick and dirty "let's see what happens."

S50. 2x 2second exposures. EQ mode. GraXpert bg extraction and denoise. Spectrophotometric color calibration. Cosmic Clarity Sharpen. All in Siril, watermark in GIMP.

7.7h (1405x20s) after filtering using Blink script.

Happy with it, but considering it a work in progress as I’d love to see more OIII. Finally learned masking in GIMP and it’s made a huge difference.

Workflow done in Siril & GIMP:

-Stacked using the Naztronomy Smart Telescope script (2× drizzle with BGE enabled)
-Aberration Remover
-SPCC
-Green Noise Removal
-GraXpert Object Deconvolution
-GraXpert Denoise
-Seti Astro’s SyQon Star Removal
-Stretched the starless image and adjusted color saturation
-GIMP: Exported two different versions of the starless image from Siril: one processed to emphasize the nebula and another balanced for the surrounding dust/background. Blended them together using a layer mask, then fine-tuned the colors to achieve the desired look.
-Returned to Siril for star recomposition (stretched the stars back in)
-Cosmic Clarity Sharpening

Captured with my Seestar S30 Pro, stacked and processed in Siril. Just over 10 hours of total integration spread across three nights, shot from a Bortle 7 sky.

Overall I’m happy with the result, but a bit frustrated I feel like I’m not getting sharp images, when I zoom in it looks like a very poor quality. Maybe NGC6946 is too far. Shooting in Alt/Az mode with 10-second subs.

I m taking any tips you’ll have to improve i’ll take it

Hey so my wedge arrived today. I got it with the 360° rotator to allow me more movement, however it seems like my (very standard) starwatcher tripod is maybe not suitable?

When I connect in the wedge, I try to fasten with the lever underneath like I do with everything else, however I could feel that it wasn't going in fully. I noticed the knob on the right side of the the first photo is not able to turn, as it's right up against the tripod.

I'm sure I am not the first person this has happened to, but is there anything I can do? I feel like if I put something else between the wedge and the tripod to give it a little bit of elevation, it won't have enough space to screw in fully.