Starship Asterisk*

The Coma Cluster. KG Observatory, Julian, CA.

https://www.astrobin.com/boaxo5/

Starlink satellites train above Cygnus

Copyright: Robin Onderka @ www.instagram.com/robin_onderka
Location: Staré Hamry, Czech Republic (Dark Sky Beskydy)
Date and Time: 10. May 2021 at 22:25 PM

Canon 6D astro-modified, Sigma 35 mm f/1.4 lens
13 sec, f/2.2 ISO 6400

Starlink satellite train above Cygnus by Robin Onderka, on Flickr

SUN- AR2823

More details:
https://www.astrobin.com/full/xb3gz2/0/?nc

Equipment
LUNT LS60MT / B1200C
QHY 174MM coled
POWERMATE 2.5X

Location: Sao Paulo - SP
Date: 05/11/2021

Copyright: Fernando Oliveira de Menezes
Email: Barretosmed@hotmail.com

IFN in Crater constellation near hip 57049 star :

IFN in Crater - Lrgb with Spacecat and Sbig 16200 - L=8h R-G-B=2h by gc.iaffaldano, su Flickr

copyright Iaffaldano Giuseppe Carmine

IFN in Ursa Major constellation near Ngc 3945

IFN close Ngc 3945 in Ursa Major - Spacecat and Sbig 16200 - LRGB - 4h-2h-2h-2h - less contrast by gc.iaffaldano, su Flickr

copyright Iaffaldano Giuseppe Carmine

M9 and other in large field :

M9 and other clusters in large field - Lrgb with Spacecat and Sbig 16200 by gc.iaffaldano, su Flickr

copyright Iaffaldano Giuseppe Carmine

Every year since 2011, when M13 is high enough in the sky, I can't resist the temptation to do it again and each time, I keep improving it. So here is my 2021 version.



Acquisition details and full resolutions are here: https://www.astrobin.com/n9wcu8/0/

Thank you for looking at it and giving me your comments!

The Blue Horse Head Nebula
Click on above to enlarge.

Full info@: https://www.kinchastro.com/the-blue-hor ... ebula.html

'Stargate'

Copyright: Sabine Gloaguen
https://en.sabinegloaguen.com

A night in Damaraland, in a desert valley flanked by sandstone mountains ...

The projection looks like a door to the immensity of the universe, capturing the photographer's full attention in the foreground. The red light of its camera reinforces the impression of perspective thanks to the shadow cast on the ground.
In the sky, the Milky Way begins to slide behind the mountains at the end of the night as the zodiacal light becomes more and more present, capturing the Pleiades cluster in its light.

For the full version, follow this link to the Astrobin file:
https://astrob.in/hltlzz/0/

Milky Way Above The Argo-Saronic Gulf During New Moon by Thanos Paraskevopulos, on Flickr

The Milky Way Above Helmos Observatory by Thanos Paraskevopulos, on Flickr

GUM 15 - Star forming region

https://www.astrobin.com/users/YovinRY/
Copyright: Yovin Yahathugoda


Full quality version here: https://cdn.astrobin.com/images/86236/2 ... c2c670.jpg

Telescope - Planewave CDK24
Camera: FLI ProLine PL9000
Filters: Astrodon E-series RGB
Software: Photoshop 2020, PixInsight & Topaz Denoise AI
Location - El Sauce Observatory, Chile

Lum - Synthetic Luminance
Red - 36x600s
Green - 40x600s
Blue - 40x600s
Total Exposure time - 19.3 hours

Full acquisition details at https://www.astrobin.com/xtu3jg/0/

M63 Sunflower Galaxy


Full size image https://flic.kr/p/2kZ9kiu

Joint capture and edit by Joe Navara (USA) and Glenn Clouder (UK)
Joe's info
Celestron EdgeHD 8 reduced to 1422mm
ZWO ASI294MM Pro LHaRGB
Lum - 110x90sec
Ha - 12x10min
RGB - 35x120sec each

Glenn's info
RC8 1624mm
ZWO ASI294MM Pro LHaRGB
Lum - 100x90sec
Ha - 24x5min
RGB - 35x120sec each

CATEGORY: SINGLE SHOT
SOCIAL IG: @victorlimaphoto
STORY: The Milky Way Core appears over the Santa Maria jump, one of the main waterfalls of the Iguassu Falls complex.
Iguassu Falls are the largest set of waterfalls in the world, with more than 275 different waterfalls and an average flow of about 1.5 million cubic meters of water per second.
Photographing using long exposure techniques in places very close to the waterfalls, as was the case in the image above, becomes a great challenge. The water spray generated is so intense we have the impression of photographing under the shower. Under these conditions, making exposures of more than 15 seconds is practically impossible, since the lens gets wet right after the start of captures. There is no alternative but to take several images of the same scene, cleaning the lens constantly between shots, and hope that some of them are perfectly sharp. Despite the setbacks, this was one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had as a photographer.
EXIF:
Canon 6Da / EF 24mm f:1.4L II
24mm / f:1.8 / 15sec / ISO 3200

Water World - Iguassu Falls by Victor Lima, no Flickr

SUN

More details:
https://www.astrobin.com/full/cjsy58/0/?nc

Equipment
LUNT LS60MT / B1200C
QHY 174MM coled
POWERMATE 2.5X

Location: Sao Paulo - SP - Brazil
Date: 5/17/2021

Copyright: Fernando Oliveira de Menezes
Email: Barretosmed@hotmail.com

Messier 13, The Great Hercules Cluster My first globular cluster image! Never had much of an interest in imaging star clusters. Can you blame me when there's so many awesome nebulae and galaxies out there? But I gave this one a shot, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Maybe I should give those star clusters a little more attention.

I used my Hyperstar setup with my ASI533mc Pro to image this. I deviated from my typical camera settings this time, knowing that I was only going to be targeting stars. I lowered the gain to 70 for better dynamic range, and only did 10 second exposures vs my typical 20 second exposures with the Hyperstar. I ended up taking 800 exposures, of which I only used 211 exposures. I was super picky about keeping subs, because I really wanted the stars to be as perfect as possible, since the stars were the spotlight. These are the best stars I've ever imaged with the Hyperstar, so I might consider trying these settings next time I image a nebula or galaxy. This gave me a total integration time of about 35 minutes which doesn't seem like very much. But if I were to try to achieve the same result with my f5.6 refractor including a reducer, I would have needed approximately 3 hours of useable data.

Most of my workflow in Pixinsight was the same as my other OSC images. Like usual, I extracted a luminance to be processed separately from the RGB, and then recombined them later with the LRGB combination process. I would say that the only major difference was with Deconvolution. I found that I needed to go really easy on the Deconvolution to get the best results.

Imaging telescope: Celestron C9.25
Imaging camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Guide Scope: ZWO 30mm F4 Guidescope
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI224MC
Software: PixInsight · Adobe Photoshop 2020
Accessories: ASIair Pro · Starizona Hyperstar 3

Frames: 211x10" (gain: 70.00) -10C bin 1x1
Integration: 35 minutes
Bortle Dark-Sky Scale: 4.00

Hope you enjoy it and Clear Skies!

Daniel Zoliro

thanos_paraskevopoulos_ wrote: ↑Mon May 17, 2021 1:05 pm The Milky Way Above Helmos Observatory by Thanos Paraskevopulos, on Flickr

At an altitude of 2340m being at one of the darkest places in Europe, you're able to admire the beauty of the night sky at its finest. We were able to see the details of the milky way with naked eye. You can also see the airglow just above the horizon, with this well recognizable green colour. It was the most impressive thing that I've ever seen in my life and this photo became my favorite immediately when I saw it on the back screen of my camera. This is a vertical panorama of two shots. These two shots were taken one after the other without changing my composition.
I took a four minutes long exposure for the sky using my star tracker and then I had to turn it off and take another four minutes long exposure for the foreground, because of the blurry foreground caused by the earth's rotation.

Technical Details:
Nikon D3300
Tokina 11-16mm f2.8
Star Tracker Vixen Polarie

thanos_paraskevopoulos_ wrote: ↑Mon May 17, 2021 1:04 pm Milky Way Above The Argo-Saronic Gulf During New Moon by Thanos Paraskevopulos, on Flickr

This image portrays the milky way above the island of Hydra at the Argo-Saronic Gulf during the New Moon. It is a blend of two single exposures at the exact same spot. The first shot was tracked using a star tracker in order to overcome the limitations of my equipment and to capture enough light and colour. Then, I turned off the star tracker and captured the second shot (for the foreground) having the exact same settings with the first one. It came out quite impressive capturing the beauty of the night sky with the milky way and the red airglow above the island of Hydra at the Argo-Saronic Gulf.

Technical Details:
Photo Composite (blended exposures), Nikon D3300, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8, Star Tracker Vixen Polarie
(2x160 sec | @11mm | ISO 1600 | f4 )

An astronomical zoo; The Elephant Trunk Nebula, the Flying Bat Nebula and the Giant Squid Nebula in a single frame

For a while I wanted to try to image the Giant Squid Nebula. I was very curious if it would even show up in my images, because its so very faint. It consists only of light in the OIII spectrum, triple ionised hydrogen. 

Since a DSLR is not as sensitive as dedicated cooled astronomy camera’s, I had to image for a few night to get the most photons as possible and thereafter really stretch the image.

The Giant Squid Nebula was discovered only in 2011 by a French amateur astronomer, Nicolas Outters and is hidden within the Flying Bat Nebula, Sharpless 2-129.

Total integration time: 13h 50min
———————————————————————— RGB 83 x 600s iso 3200

🖥 Edited in AstroPixel Processor, Photoshop and Lightroom
.
Sharpstar 61EDPH Triplet APO, Svbony 60 mm guidescope with a ZWO ASI120MM guidecamera.

🕹ZWO ASIAIR Pro

Canon EOS 6Da, Optolong L-Extreme filter

Kp4 Aurora Borealis over Lake Superior with meteor
https://www.astrobin.com/bb8owm/B
Copyright: Paul Macklin This is a 2 second exposure of a Kp4 aurora borealis over Lake Superior around 2 am on May 12, 2021. In an incredible stroke of luck, I caught a meteor in a frame with no satellite photobombers. If you look closely to the right, you can see the Double Cluster (NGC 869 and NGC 884), and Kemble's Cascade in Camelopardalis closer to the middle.

This was from a night of roadside observing in Upper Peninsula Michigan just outside Au Train, in a little parking lot with a Bortle 2 sky. Technical details available at the astrolink URL above. I stitched ~120 frames for the 8 minutes surrounding this shot into an 8K video at https://youtube.com/video/Aae8rfbNTDA.

Butterfly Nebula (Toby Jug) and its cocoon
more technical details and better resolution on https://www.astrobin.com/nt80w0

There are very few known red-orange reflective nebulae, and they are always linked to giant red stars. In this case, the star HR 3126 of its sweet little name, a red giant of type M2II, has a mass of about 5 solar masses and a magnitude of about 6.5 (it is a variable star). Usually, reflection nebulae are blue, reflecting and scattering light from blue stars that had formed in the surrounding area. IC 2220 was formed by the ejection of material from HR 3126 and the mass of this biconical cloudiness was calculated to be 0.7 solar mass. Spectral analysis of the nebula shows that, following the usual characteristic of reflection nebulae, the reflected light is slightly more bluish than the light originally emitted from the star. So look for the blue one now!

Normally the color image shows only the central part of the nebula but if we add a lot of exposure time with a narrow band H-Alpha filter, then we reveal another interesting aspect to this object. The central star has ejected matter in several phases and this can be seen by the reddish nebulosity which surrounds it in the form of bubbles. 27 hours of acquisition only with this filter were necessary!

If you are interested in knowing more about the recent (2018) discovery of these bubbles by amateur astronomer Josep Drutis, I invite you to visit the following links.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3 ... 172/aac6c7

60 Inch Telescope First Quarter Moon 8x10 Inch Dry Plate by Blake Estes, on Flickr

M51's H-alpha Whirl
web page https://www.astroefrem.com/gallery/blog ... 1-m51.html
Copyright: Efrem Frigeni

Hello,
I would like to present to you LDN1251 Angler Fish Nebula in Cepheus.
https://cdn.astrobin.com/images/5214/20 ... 1bd1b1.jpg More details: https://astrob.in/8re28n/0/

Pink Moon over the Kiel Canal

Copyright: Marco Ludwig and Eckard Bachmann

This photo of the full moon was taken on the morning of April 27, 2021. Together with my co-photographer Eckard Bachmann from the Neumünster Observatory (Germany), I positioned myself at Schacht-Audorf (Northern Germany) directly on the Kiel Canal to watch the full moon over the 108 year old Rendsburg railway bridge. Incidentally, the canal connects the Baltic Sea with the North Sea and represents one of the most important waterways in Europe. Fortunately for us, not only the moon appeared at 05:40 am CEST, but also a train and a cargo ship.
www.sternwarte-nms.de