The Pelican Nebula with the Dwarf 3

This image is just over 2 hours of integration on the Pelican Nebula. It was taken in Bortle 8/9 skies under a full moon. I used Siril for stacking, stretching, and star processing, with tweaks in Cosmic Clarity, Graxpert, and Affinity 2.

An 8 Hour Integration of the Pelican Nebula with the Seestar S50

This is an 8-hour integration of the Pelican Nebula (EQ mode, 20s individual exposures). using the S50. The frames were stacked and star-processed in Siril with noise reduction and sharpening in Cosmic Clarity. FInal tweaking was done in Affinity 2.

18 hours on the Soul Nebula

Here’s another image of the Soul nebula. This image has a total of 18.3 hours of integration time. It was captured under Bortle 8/9 skies with at least 10 hours under nearly full and full moons. Skyglow and light gradients were big problems; the raw, stacked image did not have much promise. Processing brought out some detail and colors, but also lots of noise, despite the efforts of Graxpert to remove it 🙂. I think I’m done for this year on this object….

The Soul Nebula with the Dwarf 3

Just for fun, here’s 6 hours on the Soul Nebula with the Destf 3. I normally fo lots of post processing, but I thought I’d see what I could do using nothing but my phone. I stacked in Megastack and processed in Stellar Studio (both free packages that conecwith the scope).. I decided to take the stars out so the details in the nebula would be more visible. I then tweaked color and sharpness in Photoshop PS. The scope was in EQ mode with 60s individual exposures,

SH 2-132 The Lion Nebula. 10 Hours with the Seestar S50

Sh 2-132, the Lion Nebula is a great target at this time of year. This image has a total of 10 hours of integration time x 20s subs in EQ mode. The Lion Nebula is powered by two Wolf-Rayet stars which ionize the gas of the nebula and make it glow, raking it with intense interstellar winds. It's a little challenging to image and 10 hours is about the minimum needed to capture the finer details in the gas and dust that surround these stars.

Jupiter--The Wonder that is Digital Processing :)

I found an old image of Jupiter I took in 2022 on 12/25. It was captured with a QHY camera and my 5 inch MAK. The stacked image looked so unpromising that I didn't process it. But then I noticed it on my desktop and, just for fun, dropped it into Registax 6. I was pretty impressed what the wavelet functions pullled out. I maxed out every one of them, and the resulting image is surprisingly decent. It's quite a tribute to the venerable Registax software! I've presented before and after images here for comparison. I also performed auto color balance in Registax.

North America Nebula Mosaic

This is a 3 hour mosaic of the North America Nebula. Stacked on the D3 and processed in Stellar Studio Photoshop PS. Yet again, the D3 did an outstanding job.