Starship Asterisk*

Unceasing struggle of red, blue, and dust for the heart of Cygnus

The Heart of the Cygnus - with the North America, Pelican, Butterfly, Propeller, Crescent, and dozens of other objects - an unending symphony of hydrogen reds blended with the blue of oxygen, delicately veiled by clouds of dust and stars, undeniably forms one of the most exquisite compositions in the northern sky.

This time collected not as narrowband, but pure set of 51 frames, each 120 seconds long, taken with the Samyang 135/2 lens and modified Nikon D610.
Location: Bieszczady Mountains in southern Poland
Credit: Ireneusz Nowak

Astrobin location of the full size picture: https://www.astrobin.com/eoyt30/E/
Author Astrobin link: https://www.astrobin.com/users/iro/

One shark in the infinite cosmic ocean.

Every summer I come back to my favorite constellation (Cepheus) where huge amounts of dust and interestellar gas are present. Every piece of sky in this region is extremely beautiful, and it hides cosmic jewels like this one. It is LDN1235 also known as Shark Nebula and it lies around 650 light years away from us.

I am completely in love with images of space dust (interestellar dust, IFN,...) In this one, I have tried to push up signal as much as possible with several processing techniques. I have also tried to not saturate too much the colors and keep them as more natural as possible. Hope you like it!

Image details are as follows:

Lum: 110x300" Gain 139. Bin1
RGB: 40x120" Gain 139. Bin2
Total integration time: 13.26 hours

Scope: Esprit100ED
Mount;: EQ6-R
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM Pro
Filters : Baader LRGB
Guiding: EZG60 + QHY-5-LII

Location: Several nights of June and July 2023. Belmonte, Cuenca (Spain)

Processed with Pixinsight 1.8.9

Credits: Alejandro López

Spectacular Airglow from Grand Mesa Observatory on 7/16/2023 by Transient Astro, on Flickr

Image credit and copyright Tom Masterson

The star forming region NGC6823 in Vulpecula, imaged remotely from Spain with the ASA 12N and asi2600mm pro..
Exposure time was 184 x 180s in SII, 60 x 180s in Ha and 60x 180s in OIII then 40 x 60s each in RGB.

Thanks for looking

Peter Shah

KP7 storm August 4th West Lake, BC

Nikon D5300 @ ISO 1600
Samyang 14mm 2.8 lens
Blend of one 4 second exposure for the sky and one 30 second exposure for the foreground

Cheers,

Sean Perdue

Aurora
Copyright: Sean Perdue

My attempt at presenting the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula or M16. The Pillars appear as elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust within the Eagle Nebula, in the Serpens constellation, some 6,500–7,000 light-years (2,000–2,100 pc; 61–66 Em) from Earth. The elephant trunks had been discovered by John Charles Duncan in 1920 and in my opinion, look like a hand with the fingers extending upwards. The pillars are composed of cool molecular hydrogen and dust that are being eroded by photoevaporation from the ultraviolet light of relatively close and hot stars. The leftmost pillar has been estimated at four light years in length. The finger-like protrusions at the top of the clouds are larger than the Solar System, and are made visible by the shadows of evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs), which shield the gas behind them from intense UV flux. EGGs are themselves incubators of new stars. The stars then emerge from the EGGs, which then are evaporated.
Data acquisition was on 8/4/2023 and 8/5/2023 at Brown Mountain Observatory (my Home) located in Tornado, WV
Particulars for this image:
CPC1100 deforked and on Celestron CGE Pro mount
6.3 Focal Reducer
ZWO 294MM camera
ZWO SHO filters
ZWO 120mm guide camera
ASIAIR Plus
ZWO EFW
ZWO AEF

Image Credit: Bill Brown

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks
An interesting comet, currently beyond Mars, that brightened by 5 magnitudes in late July. It is believed that one or more ice volcanoes erupted, producing the oddly distorted coma seen here. This comet will reach perihelion next April and may be a naked eye object.

Details:
QSI 660 camera on 250mm RC, Astronomic L filter
Luminance only, 32 x 2-min
Processed with PixInsight and Photoshop
Final image resolution 0.93 arcsec/pixel, 19 arcminute wide field
_

Spectacular Airglow from Grand Mesa Observatory on 7/16/2023 Annotated by Transient Astro, on Flickr

Image credit and copyright Tom Masterson

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Tue Aug 08, 2023 1:44 am Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks
An interesting comet, currently beyond Mars, that brightened by 5 magnitudes in late July. It is believed that one or more ice volcanoes erupted, producing the oddly distorted coma seen here. This comet will reach perihelion next April and may be a naked eye object.

Details:
QSI 660 camera on 250mm RC, Astronomic L filter
Luminance only, 32 x 2-min
Processed with PixInsight and Photoshop
Final image resolution 0.93 arcsec/pixel, 19 arcminute wide field
_
12P_20230804_clp.jpg

Nice, Chris!

I hope I'm not breaking any rules here, but that comet really reminds me of Gustave Doré's 1865 engraving of Moses. Moses had horns, too, just like the comet!


Ann

Semeis 57 - The Propeller Nebula is part of a vast and rich region in Cygnus, known as the Cygnus X Complex. First cataloged in the 1950s by astronomers at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory at Simeiz, Ukraine studying HII regions. This peculiar structure suggests outflow from a rotating source. No sources have yet been discovered embedded within these molecular clouds. All available data suggests interactions with the nearby supergiant Wolf Rayet 140 or Wolf-Rayet Binary WC7 as possible sources.

Telescope: Stellarvue SVX127D
Camera: QHY268M
Filters: Astronomik 6nm Ha, Oiii, Sii
Integration: 18hrs
Processing: Pixinsight Photoshop

Cocooned in a sea of Hydrogen

IC5146 The Cocoon Nebula, in RGB and Ha. Imaged remotely from Spain with the Takahashi 130ED f3:3 and the asi6200mm pro full frame sensor
Exposure times were  94x 120s in each RGB and 116x 180s in Ha.

Thanks for looking

Peter Shah


https://astrob.in/9su6ze/0/rawthumb/hd/get.jpg?insecure

255 hour collaboration - Whirlpool Galaxy with Ionized Hydrogen "Shelf" by \William Ostling, on Flickr

Processing notes here: https://theastroenthusiast.com/m51-processing/

The Whirlpool galaxy, also known as Messier 51, is a galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici. It lies at a distance of roughly 23 million lightyears and spans some 80.000 ly in diameter. M51 is a pretty popular target amongst astrophotographers as it has some very distinctive spiral arms which were first discovered by William Parson in 1845, also making it the first object where spiral arms were detected.

Another unique attribute to this galaxy is the tidal stream which shows even at low integration times. The full extent of the tidal stream on the other hand is rarely shown, which is also part of the reason why we started this project, in the end, we were able to reveal even the faintest parts of it. These streams are a result of the tidal interaction between M51a (the big one) and M51b (the small one). So in fact M51 can be considered as two galaxies rather than one.

As this tidal interaction makes M51 so interesting, the galaxies have been studied excessively to better understand what’s happening between two merging galaxies. However, it wasn’t until 2018 that A. Watkins et al. discovered a large ionised gas cloud north of the galaxy system, which is one of the things we focused on for this collaboration.
You can spot this recently discovered ionised gas cloud in our image on the right hand side - it was revealed using 118h 39mn of integration time in the Ha wavelength and was quite the challenge to reveal, but more on that later. In order to reveal both the entirety of the tidal streams and the Ha cliff formation, we knew we had to gather lots of data.
After our big project on the galaxy pair M81/82, our team wanted to keep the cooperation going - together we decided that M51 will be our next target. As some people weren’t able to contribute this time, new ones joined in and our group for M51 now consists of 16 people: 1 Editor and 15 photographers.

As we want to keep this going in the long term, we also decided to get a team name - The Deep sky collective.
By mid-July, after rejecting bad frames, we were left with 254h 51m 30 s total (or ~10.6 days); this also marks the longest integration time ever on M51 from any group of amateurs

All details here: https://www.astrobin.com/7hwtz0/

LBN 438 + PGC 69439

Author: Tommaso Stella
web: https://www.facebook.com/tommaso.m.stella

Date: 2023-07-19,20,23
Location: Stigliano (MT) + Valle degli Ulivi (TA) (Italy)
Lights: 109x300s RGB (SQM 21.2) + 19x600s Ha 3nm (SQM 19.85)
Total exposure: 12.25 h
Telescope: SkyWatcher 250/1000 + GPU Coma Corrector
Camera: Omegon veTEC 571C V4
Filters: Optolong L-CCD + Optolong Ha 3nm
Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 GT
Processing: DeepSkyStacker, PixInsight, Photoshop CC

MILKY WAY, LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD (LMC) AND THE AIRGLOW EFFECT IN THE SKY OF THE ATACAMA DESERT


Here in this image of a rare moment, with temperatures reaching 0ºC, I came across this unique moment, a scene that will remain with me for the rest of my life.

Here we have, on the land part, me and a dirt road.

In the sky, this greenish effect called AIRGLOW (an effect of chemiluminescence, where the energy of the daytime sun, causes divisions in the queues containing oxygen, which recombine at night, giving this appearance). Furthermore, in the region above my head, we see the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy) and further up the arm of our Milky Way galaxy.


EQUIPMENT:
Canon 6D
Canon 24mm 1.4 Lens
Smarteq pro assembly

CAPTURE:
SKY:
1X59" @ ISO3200 F3.5 with mount on guide method
FOREGRAUND:
1X59" stack @ ISO3200 F3.5



LOCATION: San Pedro de Atacama - Chile
DATE 04/17/2023

Author: Fernando Oliveira de Menezes
Email: Barretosmed@hotmail.comCopyright: Your name

THE CRESCENT NEBULA
THE SOAP BUBBLE NEBULA
- Deepspace object LHOO, 1665mm
- Constellation Cygnus



NGC 6888, also known as the "Circle Nebula," "Crescent Nebula," or "Crescent Nebula," is a remarkable astronomical object in the constellation of Cygnus, about 4700 light-years from Earth and spanning 25 light-years. This emission nebula is the product of a fascinating cosmic choreography in which a massive star ejects its outer layers into space at the end of its life cycle. The result is an impressive cloud of luminous gas extending in a striking circular structure.

The luminous nebula is excited to glow by intense radiation from the central Wolf-Rayet star, designated WR 136, causing it to shine in a variety of colors. The star is losing its outer shell due to strong stellar winds - every 10,000 years WR 136 becomes lighter by one solar mass. WR 136 is also a hot candidate for an upcoming enormous supernova, because it burns its nuclear fuel insanely fast. The characteristic red hues come from hydrogen atoms excited by the star's energy, while the brilliant blue indicates the presence of oxygen. The combination of these colors gives the nebula a fascinating and aesthetically pleasing appearance.

The circular shape of the nebula is created by the interaction between the ejected gases of the dying star and the interstellar material in the surrounding area. This leads to the formation of a hollow structure with a luminous disk in the center - a distinctive feature that has earned the nebula its nickname, the "Circle Nebula."

A little off to the left, a small planetary nebula discovered as recently as 2009, the Soap Bubble Nebula. It glows so faintly that you have to invest several hours of exposure time to make it visible.
The faint colors of the nebula, ranging from soft pinks to shimmering blues to delicate greens, reveal the chemical composition and physical processes taking place in this cosmic bubble. The Bubble Nebula reminds us how stars can eject their last reserves of energy into space, transforming their surroundings into a luminous work of art.

Optics: AG10 CDK F6.7 f=1665mm (AFIL-1 Insight Observatory)
Camera: ZWO ASI6200MM Pro / Filters Astrodon
Mount: SkyWatcher EQ8RH
Obsrver: Alpha Zhang
Lights: 12x LUM, 12x Red, 13x Green, 15x Blue each 180s Bin 1x1
Lights: 14x Red, 13x Green, 14x Blue each 600s Bin 1x1
Lights: 13x LUM each 1800s Bin 1x1
Lights: 62x hA, 104x OIII each 1800s Bin 1x1
Location: Gemini Observatory - Lijiang, China
Date: 2022-05-25 to 2022-11-01

Acquired imageset taken by Insight Observatory (Alpha Zhang), Image Processing - Thomas ArtOfPix Grossschmidt.

Image Processing:
Primarily Pixinsight, Photoshop, Lightroom, GraXpert, BTX Blur Terminator, Noise Terminator, Star X Terminator.

https://cdn.astrobin.com/thumbs/CNGGQZX ... zGwWim.jpg

A close up image of The Elephant's Trunk taken from my backyard in Victoria Texas over two nights on August 5th, and 6th of 2023. A majestic stellar structure of gas and dust. Getting this close to a star forming region from our backyards is truly something to behold. IC 1396 mixes glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Nearly 3,000 light-years from planet Earth. The intriguing and highly granular dust with hidden stars in their infancy are on display in this close up image.

Location: Victoria, Texas (Backyard)
Telescope: Celestron C11XLT
Mount: AM5
Camera: 2600mm pro
Filters: Chroma 3nm Ha, Sii, Oiii
Reducer: Starziona LF 0.7x FR.
Guiding camera: 174mm mini with OAG-L

Frames:
Chroma H-alpha 3nm Bandpass 36 mm: 70×300″(5h 50′)
Chroma OIII 3nm Bandpass 36 mm: 48×300″(4h)
Chroma SII 3nm Bandpass 36 mm: 48×300″(4h)

Calibrated with Draks/ Flats/ Bias frames.

Processing in Pixinsight:
For the RGB image: WBPP>RGB combination in SHO>SPCC>BlurX>NoiseX>StarX>UnlinkedStretch
For the Luminance: Ha image > BlurX>NoiseX>StarX>Unlinked stretch

RGB+L combined with LRGB combination > GHS Curvestransformation > Rescreened stars back.



Thank you for looking.

Sagitarius triplet by Alessandro Carrozzi, su Flickr

These three bright nebulae are a classic of the summer sky located near the center of the Milky Way. The group consists of the large M8, or Lagoon Nebula, the colorful M20 or Trifid, and NGC 6558, on the left of M8 and separated from it by a dark dust lane.
The shot was taken remotely from Chile, where these objects are at the zenith, and combines "narrow-band" shots of the nebulae's main emissions, Ha and OIII, with broadband data to better highlight dust, stars and the objects' "natural" colors.

Technical data: Samyang 135mm f/3.5 with ZWO ASI 1600 MM. 18x120s Ha, 18X120s OIII, 11x120s L, 3x120s RGB

WR 134 was one of the first three Wolf-Rayet stars identified in 1867 (hard to believe we've been doing spectroscopy for nearly 160 years!) and though the surrounding nebula is not as famous as its cousin the Crescent Nebula), it is still a popular astrophotography target. My goal for this image was to show as much of the complete O III bubble as I could. The challenge is most of the bubble is very faint.

Thankfully modern software is up to the challenge!

This is 31h 45m of data (mostly HOO with a bit of RGB for stars)

Equipment:
Planewave CDK14
FLI ML16803
Astrodon filters

Processed in PixInsight

Image acquired by our team with the telescope hosted at Sierra Remote Observatories
Acquisition Team: Linda Thomas-Fowler, Chris Kagy, Bob Traube, Jim Medley, Tim Triche
Data Processed by: Linda Thomas-Fowler
Equipment owned by: Tim Triche

Messier 20 (The Trifid Nebula)

Telescope: RC16"
Mount: ASA DDM85XL
Reducer: Massimo Riccardi Reducer 0.75x
CMOS: QHY268C (resolution 0.32"/px)
Total exposure: 12h (144x300sec)

M101 - SN2023ixf and an Active Galaxy

You can imagine my surprise back in May, when just a few days after starting to image M101, the news broke that a Supernova had just been discovered in M101. I was over the moon seeing the exploded star appear in the photos. Needless to say, I thought this would be great to do a full colour image highlighting the Ha within the galaxy given the remains of an old star form the material for new ones. Not to be deterred by the windy London weather and my awful levels of LP, I managed to collect 4 hrs of Ha, 7 hours of Luminance (both with 9.25 Edge HD + ASI294mm) and 10 hrs of OSC RGB (Celestron 8" XLT + ASI294MC). Data wasn't perfect, but I was pleased nonetheless. I must say, I had to resist stretching the data into overly artistic considerations given there appeared to be an ample amount of dust/tidal streams surrounding M101. I was tempted to see if there was any IFN nearby but held off given the potential to ruin the image with London's finest light pollution gradients no doubt lurking in the shadows (pun intended!).

Astrobin Link: https://astrob.in/rbzc1i/C/

Location: Front Garden, London, United Kingdom
Imaging Dates: May 24 - 26, 2023
Equipment: Celestron 9.25 Edge HD, Celestron 8” XLT
Software: Pixinsight, PHD2, NINA, Russell Croman BlurXT, NoiseXT, StarXT
Frames: 38x360 secs 6nm Ha, 274x90 secs (ASI294mm Pro) 123 x 300 secs (ASI 294MC Pro)
Total integration: 20 hrs, 54 mins
26.06% average moon phase

Hope you enjoy and many thanks for your consideration.

Best,

Hamza Ilyas

Millenary Araucarias trees in southern Chile.
Copyright: Marcelo Maturana Rodríguez (@matuutex)
Location: Conguillio National Park, South of Chile
Date: 25 June 2023
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/matuutex
Nikon d5600, Tokina lens 14/20mm f2 iso 2500 20 segs


DSC_9698 by Marcelo Maturana, en Flickr

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/531 ... 9eed_k.jpg

1st August Super Moonrise over Santi Ikto Giant, Mandurah Western Australia.
The sculpture was made by artist Thomas Dambo, and is one of 6 which have been placed around Mandurah & Perth.
I had to get knee deep in the surf taking this shot to get this perspective. Some of the locals in the area saw the alignment happening and joined me on the beach, telling me that it happens quite regularly for anyone lucky enough to be there in the right place and time, I however had planned this shot months prior, and was super happy the sky was clear, as a storm came in later


Tech details :
1st August 2023, 6:02PM
Lumix DC-G9 & G Vario 100-300mm ( shot at 250mm)
ISO 1600 F5.6 1/60 & 1/2500 (Exposure stacked)

[img2}Illuminate by Simon Capone, on Flickr [/img2]

Barnard 150 / SH2-129 / Fireworks galaxy with comet C/2023 E1 Atlas by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

CTB1-LBN576 LSHO With RGB Stars


Image data:
Date: july & august 2023
Site: Albox - Almería - Spain
Image Details: Ha: 40x900", SII: 40x900", OIII: 40x900" and Red: 60x20", Green: 60x20", Blue: 60x20" for RGB Stars, for a total of 31 hours of exposure.
Telescope: Teleskop-Service Imaging Star 130mm f/5 - 6-elements Flatfield APO
Mount: Celestron CGX
Camara: ZWO ASI2600MMC
CCD Guiding: QHY5L-II
Capture: N.I.N.A.
Guiding : PHD Guiding 2
Processing: PixInsight
Calibrated with Bias, Darks and Flats applied

M8 Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius

Telescope: RC16"
Mount: ASA DDM85XL
Reducer: Massimo Riccardi Reducer 0.75x
CMOS: QHY268C (resolution 0.32"/px)
Total exposure: 10.5h (126x300sec) https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/531 ... 99c9_k.jpg