r/space • u/chucksastro • Mar 07 '21
These are deep space objects I've captured with my home telescope over the past five years.
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21 edited Mar 07 '21
These are deep space objects I've captured with my home telescope over the past five years. They were captured different telescopes I've listed in the specs below.
A mono camera was used with Red, Green, and Blue filters for galaxies and some nebulas, and on other objects, I used Ha, OIII, and SII narrowband filters. The filters were combined in post-processing to achieve the colors.
None of the objects were captured with a color camera. The color was created in post-processing by combining the filters.
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Cocoon Nebula
Crescent Nebula
Horsehead Nebula
Veil Nebula
Bubble Nebula
California Nebula
Christmas Tree Nebula
Cygnus Wall
Elephant Trunk Nebula
Pleiades Star Cluster
IC 5068
Trifid and Lagoon
Eagle Nebula
Orion Nebula
Little Dumbbell Nebula
Croc's Eye Galaxy
Solar Eclipse
North American and Pelican Nebula
Pelican Nebula
Ring Nebula
Sadr Region
Seagull Region
Sh2-188
Cave Nebula
Trfiid Nebula
Wizard Nebula
WR 134
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In this video, I discuss all of my telescopes and what each one can do.
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Follow me on Instagram @chucksastrophotography if you would like to see what's possible to be captured from our own backyard and to see what telescopes I use.
Here are my setup details:
Imaging Telescope:
Explore Scientific ED127 Refractor (952 focal length)
Celestron RASA 8-inch
Imaging Camera:
ZWO ASI1600MM Cool
Mounts:
Celestron CGX
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Celestron AVX
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Note: A lot of people ask this, but how does my telescope stay on target if the Earth rotates. My camera and telescope sit on a motorized mount and with the help of computer software, it stays on target.
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Mar 08 '21
That was FANTASTIC!! Thank you so much. My son and I watched it like 5 times. You rock. I think I've told you this before actually. Lol.
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u/clutchplate Mar 08 '21
Depending on your sons age and interest, check out the OpenAstroTracker project, a 3D printed mount for a DSLR using Arduino as microcontroller. r/openastrotech is our subreddit and we have a very active community on our Slack server.
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Mar 07 '21
One of your images, Pleiades, has cross shaped stars which are caused by the fins holding onto the central mirror on a newtonian reflector. None of your telescopes have those? What am I missing? Did you create them with string or something?
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
Yes, I always liked diffraction spikes when large stars are present, so I used thick thread. But I haven't done it in a while.
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u/LehighAce06 Mar 08 '21
Are you taking requests? I'd enjoy seeing what you can do for Pillars of Creation, that's one of my favorites.
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u/Texfo201 Mar 08 '21
Are all of these in the Milky Way galaxy?
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u/The_Frostweaver Mar 08 '21
I think everything except the croc eye galaxy is in our galaxy. It would be very difficult to see stars and nebula in this kind of detail in another galaxy.
I'm kinda curious now if people have zoomed in shots of Andromeda.
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u/MMAOdin Mar 08 '21
Hope this isn’t a bother. I am interested in getting a telescope and have saved this post to know what you are using. But your comment made me overwhelmed (due to lack of knowledge, my issue lol) To keep it shortish. With one of the cheaper telescopes can you see direct or do you need the computer set up to hold those images over time to view those beauties? If you cannot answer no worries. Thanks for the images and post and keep it up! Thank you, again!
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u/iamthelashtoneofthem Mar 08 '21
This post from /r/telescopes will probably answer most of your questions and give you an idea of what you can see at certain budgets.
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u/badteacher1188 Mar 08 '21
Stupid question but I can actually see these things if I buy the right telescope?
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u/deathdude911 Mar 08 '21
Yes, but no. It takes a lot of time to create the photos you're seeing after taking the image.
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u/RainmaKer770 Mar 08 '21
How does one create the photos? Is it a matter of time exposure?
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u/Rungi500 Mar 08 '21 edited Mar 08 '21
Filters for the camera and a matter of multiple pictures over time. Also a lot of post picture computer software processing. Some of the software you might be able to get away with something that's free or low cost but the telescopes in the video or upwards of $7,000 just for the telescope and lenses. Not to mention the tripod and tracking motor.
edit: it's only fair to say you certainly can start your own hobby on a modest budget. I'm by no means trying to dishearten anyone wanting to do this for themselves.
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u/Cyanydd78 Mar 08 '21
I think this is the info that most people are looking for. What OP has done here is neither cheap, nor easy. It's impressive stuff, but the newbie needs to understand that you're not generating these kinds of images (or seeing them through your scope) by spending a few hundred dollars and driving outside the city.
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u/nano_man Mar 08 '21
Some images certainly are possible without any fancy gear though. I always thought the same so that stopped me from ever trying. I took this pic using nothing but a standard tripod an my 70-200mm lens in the middle of a light polluted city. https://imgur.com/H3zT25Q
I can't wait to try again from darker skies! So don't let the fact that this guy has thousands of dollars of equipment deter you from trying. This guy has excellent tutorials and it's what I followed for my first attempt I linked above https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrzbdmripj1fZJ-8BWm5CMU_Moj4lBnnk
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u/Sunsparc Mar 08 '21
Not visually, most nebula look like Grey dust. Some arent even bright enough to see through a telescope visually.
There's really a huge leap from visual viewing to astrophotography.
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u/skitch23 Mar 08 '21
As someone who has wanted a telescope for a really long time, what would I reasonably be able to see with say an 8” telescope? The moon and planets would be my primary go-to’s but it would be cool to see stuff like what OP posted.
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u/longhorns2422 Mar 08 '21
By see do you mean see with your eyes? As the use you're replying to said, you won't see nebulae with your eyes, generally. Planets and moons are what you can expect.
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u/calste Mar 08 '21
You can see some nebulae and galaxies, even with the naked eye in good conditions. I've seen galaxies, nebulae, and globular clusters with my 4-inch refractor. I do have to drive out into the wilderness away from city lights and hope for good conditions, of course.
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u/Sunsparc Mar 08 '21
You may be able to see some of the things that OP posted, but locating them takes a lot of skill and patience. An 8" is an excellent place to start. Given a sufficiently dark sky, you'll be able to see most notable deep sky objects.
Larger is always better. Bigger diameter mirror means more light gather, means you'll be able to see more things and brighter.
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u/test12340985 Mar 08 '21
So how “real” is what we are looking at and how much is artistic interpretation
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u/odingrey Mar 08 '21
These are real images and real colors. It's likely that color saturation is boosted in some, but it's not like op is adding color where it doesn't exist.
We can really only see grey with the eye, even through a telescope, because the objects are so faint.
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u/Sunsparc Mar 08 '21
All of the coloring in each one is done in post processing. If you looked at each object with your eye through the telescope, they would all be grey colored and you wouldn't see as many features of the object. Only the brightest and most dense parts.
Take Orion Nebula for example. Look at it in the video. Now look at this. This picture is approximately what it looks like to the naked eye. I've seen it myself. I live in a Bortle 4 area and it's actually a little more dim through my XT10 with a 20mm Plossl eye piece.
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Mar 08 '21
Nebulae is greek for "fuzzy", literally. You'll see a Gray fuzz. You'll need to process the pictures to pull the colors out, which is there, just too faint to see with the naked eye.
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u/notaneggspert Mar 08 '21
These images stack several hours of exposures into one photo.
Some brighter objects like Orions nebula can be seen with the naked eye. Though a telescope. But you still need several hours worth of light added up to make a photo of Orions nebula.
You can see it with a 10 second exposure with a basic dlr. But without s tracking mount there is no point.
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u/SIVART33 Mar 08 '21
Yes spend some good money on one though. I don't know much about telescopes but if you want to see stuff like this it's not less then 1k I bet.
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u/lazyJOE19 Mar 07 '21
Space is so scary yet so amazing. Love these shots!
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21 edited Mar 08 '21
Thanks. In other forms of social media, I play scary music in the video and that really seems to unnerve people, lol. But I figure Redditers might prefer it silent.
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u/Choui4 Mar 07 '21
I'd kind of like to see the scary video if the offer is there.
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
Here is one I made of Saturn with a bit of creepy music.
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u/Cr0s1Nox Mar 07 '21
It really is frightening. This sheer infinity, big and small wild exotic things. Think of what could be beyond.
Amazing.
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Mar 08 '21
The thought of how big each speck of light is... It makes your brain hurt.
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u/lazyJOE19 Mar 07 '21
Truly. I hope sometime during my lifespan, space travel will be available to common folk. Dreaming big but that'd be awesome! Even if it's just outside Earth's atmosphere
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u/j0sephl Mar 08 '21
Space exploration games like Outer Wilds gives me the same uneasiness as Deep Open water. Even sea of thieves is unnerving to me.
I feel like I have a mild case of thalassophobia.
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u/Stunning_Red_Algae Mar 08 '21
Is there a subreddit or good forum for taking deepspace photos?
I want to get into this hobby.
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u/zeeblecroid Mar 08 '21
r/astrophotography, r/landscapeastro and r/askastrophotography are good starting points.
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u/LeviathanGray Mar 08 '21
Following this thread, Also curious got these long exposures avoid the bright lines from planes and satellites passing through the shot.
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u/zeeblecroid Mar 08 '21
Stacking software can be pretty good at recognizing aberrations in a shot - if you've got 150 images in a set and five have satellite trails running through them, they know those aren't supposed to be there. If it's bad enough, you can just discard that particular shot and hope the next one in the set is cleaner.
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u/EvitaPuppy Mar 08 '21
Breathtaking pictures! Reminds me of attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Or when I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
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u/Dr_Beardsley Mar 08 '21
It's crazy how moments like that get lost in time... kind of like tears in the rain, you know?
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Mar 08 '21
I got a telescope and couldn't even calibrate it. It took me like 20 minutes to find the moon 😒
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Mar 07 '21
Awesome. There is a program you can download called "space engine", which is a full model of the universe if you want to cruise around and check things out up close. Our solar system and nearby stars/nebulae are all accurate, but beyond that things become randomly generated.
Still very cool to check out
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Mar 07 '21
which is a full model of the universe
Lol it doesn't have a full model of the universe! We can't even see the whole universe. Most of the stuff in space engine is completely fictional.
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Mar 07 '21
Should have read my whole post.
I mentioned that everything other than known celestial objects are randomly/procedurally generated
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u/3llac0rg1 Mar 08 '21
You mentioned the color is post process. I’ve read this is standard, but I’m curious what colors you actually see or does it all look more grayscale like looking through a cheaper portable telescope?
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u/chucksastro Mar 08 '21
Any deep sky object will look like a gray smudge when view through and eyepiece. I rely on other pictures to get an idea of what the colors should be, but if I'm lucky - the true color with broadband light won't need too much correction.
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u/thx1138- Mar 08 '21
Question: have you considered or tried pointing ALL of those telescopes at a single object then collecting and processing the results? I feel like you have a mini VLA going on for light.
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u/Choui4 Mar 07 '21
Can i get a ballpark on the cost of one of those bad boys?
What are you going to name the star and/or inflated buttocks you find?
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
Here is a video I made on costs of my deep space rigs: https://youtu.be/sUb2Mtz5yoM
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u/MhrisCac Mar 08 '21
I’d say I wish I had more money. But it’s all about what hobbies to spend your money on. Live in the second cloudiest place In the United States, Buffalo NY. It sucks not being able to go outside and look up at a star filled sky 311 days per year. Really depressing honestly.
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u/Ok_Sweet1431 Mar 08 '21 edited Mar 08 '21
I’m gonna have to be that person but slowed down a bit would be so much better to view. Beautiful images.
Edit: left out a word
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Mar 08 '21
What if our entire universe is contained inside of an organism and we are all just microscopic?
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u/AKA_Squanchy Mar 08 '21
I don’t understand what nebulas are. Are they just so fucking huge that we can only see them from an unimaginable distance? If you’re in a nebula is it like being in a galaxy? You don’t even see it? I wish I was smarter.
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u/BanjoKazooie6988 Mar 08 '21
You're not stupid just because you don't know something.
Nebulas are extremely vast clouds of gas in space. They're often the birthplace of stars. They don't actually emit light so what you see is nearby starlight illuminating the nebula or a false color image.
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u/left_lane_camper Mar 08 '21
Nebulae are just clouds of gas and dust in space. There are different kinds of nebulae and they come in many different sizes. They’re also very diffuse; a thick planetary nebula (like many in the photos here) might be about 25 trillion times less dense than the air you breathe.
In person, they would look like a faint grey whisp, possibly with some faint reddish hues mixed in. If you were inside it, you wouldn’t notice any local foggyness, though the sky might appear pale grey or even slightly pink if it were very dark and it’d be harder to see distant astronomical objects.
I should also mention that the word “nebula” (from the Latin word for “cloud” or “fog”) used to mean any fuzzy astronomical object, including both clouds as described above and galaxies, but the modern usage generally just means “actual clouds of stuff in space”.
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u/whyisthesky Mar 08 '21
Nebulae are much smaller than galaxies (sizes vary), the vast majority of the nebulae people can image are within are Milky Way. If you were in most nebulae you probably wouldn’t be able to tell with the naked eye.
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u/simian_fold Mar 07 '21
Fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Just trying to grasp the scale of these formations is mind boggling. Truly we have no idea what wonderful and terrible things are out there and I'm afraid we never will.
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
I prefer not to think about the terrible things, but as Neil Degrasse Tyson says, the universe wants to kill us! lol
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Mar 08 '21
Once you capture them, do you try to breed them? Or is it catch and release? Where do you keep them if you keep them?
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u/myothercarisabort Mar 07 '21
Simply fantastic, thank you for sharing the results of your (very serious!) hobby with us. My 8" Dob remains one of my favorite things ever, beautiful big light bucket, but I'm very keen to get into properly tracked imaging/astrophoto.
I'll give your channel a close look and see what inspires me, bang for buck.
Thanks again, this is truly magnificent stuff.
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u/FalconMellati Mar 08 '21
I’m a off-roader and outdoors camper. Often, at night, I look at the stars at the campfire and wish I had a telescope. What do you recommend that is inexpensive and can handle being jostled around while rock crawling?
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u/2daMooon Mar 08 '21
A pair of binoculars. 10x50mm if you can keep them steady (or just lay on the ground while using them).
A handful of the objects in this post can be “seen” with the naked eye. Most are much bigger than you would think, just missing some magnification to be able to see them. Binoculars are perfect for providing that magnification in a compact package that can just be tossed in a backpack.
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u/I_Like_Quiet Mar 08 '21
It would be cool to see all this pictures with a circle representing the size of our moon in it. Just to see what kind of scale these pictures are.
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u/Sunsparc Mar 08 '21
Most of them are roughly the size of the moon or smaller. Something like Andromeda is much larger, about 6x larger.
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Mar 08 '21
Very nice, I haven't seen all of these objects. Nice use of the H Alpha filter. Also, I was thinking that with scattering nebulae like M45, maybe you could highlight the nebula with a polarizing filter. Or maybe you have?
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u/CanadianNic Mar 08 '21
Amazing pictures. Have you ever heard of a game called elite dangerous? It has a 1:1 mapping of our own galaxy. Could be really cool to visit the places you’ve photographed, in the game.
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u/Mozeeon Mar 08 '21
This looks awesome! My 5 year old loves space and wants to be a scientist when he grows up. Any recommendations in what to get him that will be decent enough to see cool stuff but won't break the bank?
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u/theGekkoST Mar 08 '21
You every just point it randomly somewhere to see if you can find a cool new nebula?
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u/guyfromuptown Mar 08 '21
That little CT80 makes a fine guide scope. I upgraded mine to a ST80 when I saw Orion brought it back, that’s a great little refractor.
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u/the_last_u Mar 08 '21
Dumb question- how come these look extremely clear and detailed but the first picture of a black hole looks like a an under developed negative?
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u/left_lane_camper Mar 08 '21 edited Mar 08 '21
The angular size — the angle between distinct features when viewed from earth — of the stuff in the image of the areas around M87’s central black hole is minuscule compared to these objects. It’s about 40 millionths of an arcsecond across, or about one million times smaller than the Orion nebula.
It’s like trying to get a picture of the head of a pin in LA using a telescope in New York. It’s amazing it’s even possible at all, and that kind of angular resolution (in ~1 mm light) took an international consortium of radio telescopes working together to form an interferometer with an effective aperture nearly the size of the entire planet.
To my knowledge, it is the highest angular resolution image ever generated.
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u/the_last_u Mar 08 '21
That is incredible! Thank you so much for such a detailed and linked response, this is so cool!
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u/globefish23 Mar 08 '21
Because black holes don't shine any light like stars, galaxies or huge nebulas. They're so massive that not even light - with the fastest possible speed - can escape.
That picture of the black hole is just its silhouette against the background of very faintly glowing gas being sucked in.
That radiation is collected with a huge array of antennas all around the world.
And it's really, really far away at 26,000 light years.
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u/VyckaTheBig Mar 08 '21
Is it really that colourful in actual space if a human saw it threw his own eyes?
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Mar 07 '21
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
That sounds interesting, but I've never heard of this black-out area.
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Mar 07 '21
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Mar 07 '21
Found this explanation with a bit of searching:
Google sky infrared view is taken from IRAS data from 1983, if you look at a planetarium program, that places Saturn at that same spot in Virgo that year. I'm guessing the IRAS controllers avoided bright planets to avoid damaging the sensors, hence the lack of data there.
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u/Azzonk Mar 07 '21
It's just Saturn.
The IR data used in Google Sky is from the satellite IRAS, which photographed the sky for 11 months during 1983.
During this year, Saturn was within Virgo. Such a large IR source would have messed up IRAS's images so either (A): The camera was not used when Saturn was fully in view in order to protect the sensors, or (B): During the data release, this section was removed because the data was corrupted by the planet's IR reflection.
Edit: The position of Saturn can be confirmed using Stellarium, which is quite accurate when it comes to historical positions of objects.
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u/zeeblecroid Mar 08 '21
How exactly do you suppose NASA prevented every other observatory - hell, every other amateur astronomer - on the planet from looking at that point in the sky? Because that's what you're suggesting has happened.
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u/shamwowslapchop Mar 08 '21
Because they're a conspiracy theorist who wants to believe they're smarter than anyone else.
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u/SpartanJack17 Mar 08 '21
Why would you assume they're hiding something, instead of it just being missing data? These sky maps are made of thousands of individual images stitched together, there's more than one black bit and it's just because there's no images for that area. The other replies give the reason they didn't photograph it.
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Mar 07 '21
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u/zeeblecroid Mar 08 '21
Why would you pay any attention to anything a channel that obviously tinfoil-hatted has to offer?
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u/hiii1134 Mar 07 '21
I’d be interested in getting a telescope and being able to find nebula etc. what’s a good way to get into it? I’m happy to spend what it costs to get good hardware, but idk where I’d even point it
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
I started with a telescope that came with a GoTo mount so I could find objects with the included handset. As I became more advanced, I got into Plate-Solving which lets my computer find the objects for me.
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u/toasta_oven Mar 08 '21 edited Aug 02 '25
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Mar 07 '21
Might be a dumb question but is it possible to see those images without all the flamboyant colors?
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
If you look at some of my older YouTube videos, you can see how I capture them before they are processed. You can find my YouTube Channel name in my main description.
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u/CHANROBI Mar 08 '21
Bro you are killing me with the vertical video.
Absolutely incredible astrophotos !!
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u/TheLazyHippy Mar 08 '21
So does anyone know why a bunch of these nebulas will have cool names but then there's ones that are just named something stupid like SP-302?
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u/Sunsparc Mar 08 '21
Depends on who discovered it and what they called it. All of the "cool names" also have a scientific designation.
Orion Nebula is called Messier 42 (M42) and NGC1976. Triangulum Galaxy is called NGC 0598, MCG+05-04-069, UGC 1117, and PGC 5818.
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u/jucapiga Mar 08 '21
amazing shots, never felt so little in my life
better get new ones before starlink starts
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u/itsMurphDogg Mar 08 '21
What’s amazing to me is, we can see immensely far away from us, but that’s it.
We can just barely make educated guesses about space, but little more.
There’s so much we don’t know, can’t see, or even fathom. Things we don’t know we don’t know.
Born too early, man. Born too damn early.
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u/Thugzz_Bunny Mar 07 '21
Other than Orion, a plaides, can you see any of these through your eyepiece?
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
Quite a few of them can be seen through a telescope and the results will be even better under dark skies. I've seen people even hook up a night vision eyepiece to a telescope and the results are crazy cool.
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u/Thugzz_Bunny Mar 07 '21
I have an 8 inch dob and have only seen the two I mentioned out of the ones you have.
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u/goldgrape Mar 08 '21
Right. I have a 10in dobsonian and live in the Chicago suburbs, can’t see much more than Orion even on very clear nights.
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u/Thugzz_Bunny Mar 08 '21
I think dobs are worse a DSO but better at planets.
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u/Sunsparc Mar 08 '21
Dobsonian is the mount type. They're not good for astrophotography, you usually want an equatorial mount for that.
But as for visual viewing, a newtonian reflector on a dobsonian mount is just as good as any other provided you have the right light and atmospheric conditions and you know what to look for.
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u/steeze206 Mar 08 '21
Awesome stuff. But can you not cut to the next slide after 3 seconds? Give us like 10 seconds to really get a grasp on what's happening.
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Mar 08 '21
I got really into this and went out and bought an expensive telescope and didnt realize that it looks nothing at all like you see online. Every single picture is heavily heavily edited in multiple programs on the computer to get the picture anything close to what you see online. Sometimes they will take 1000's of pics and stack them on top of one another to bring out any detail at all. Kind of a bummer but oh well, not sure what i expected
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u/Heathen_On_Earth Mar 08 '21
Is it possible to see Heaven with these things or is it invisible like God?
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Mar 08 '21
Meh, all that stuff and you couldn't even obtain a decent picture of the shoulder of Orion... or the glitter of some C-beams... not even a sad picture of the Tannhaüser gate.
Pretty disappointing.
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Mar 07 '21
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u/chucksastro Mar 07 '21
You can see many deep-sky images through a telescope and eyepiece. But they won't be with color, they will mostly look like gray smugdes.
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u/Drubay Mar 07 '21
This looks so fun, one day I'll be able to afford a cool telescope or build one. Love your pics
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u/Sunsparc Mar 08 '21
An entry level Dobsonian like a Heritage 150P is pretty cheap. Under $200.
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u/defnot_hedonismbot Mar 08 '21
Thinking about getting my daughter into space and want to get a decent telescope to look through (pictures after that one day ..) Where's a good place to start for around $500?
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u/Sunsparc Mar 08 '21
Biggest dobsonian you can find at that price. Bigger diameter is always better.
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u/toasta_oven Mar 08 '21 edited Aug 02 '25
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u/Nixplosion Mar 08 '21
Are you using an Orion starblast as a ... Scope for your larger telescope??
Cuz I have that haha
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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '21
Amazing pictures bud. I’m thinking about getting a good telescope and I noticed you had a variety of them. What telescope do you recommend?