Space is cool
Astrophotography
Welcome to !astrophotography!
We are Lemmy's dedicated astrophotography community!
If you want to see or post pictures of space taken by amateurs using amateur level equipment, this is the place for you!
If you want to learn more about taking astro photos, check out our wiki or our discord!
Please read the rules before you post! It is your responsibility to be aware of current rules. Failure to be aware of current rules may result in your post being removed without warning at moderator discretion.
Rules
- I | Real space images only.
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Astrophotography refers to images of astronomical objects or phenomena exclusively.
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~~Images that show objects or people below the Kármán Line (100km) will be removed.~~ We won't be enforcing this rule for now, but as the community grows eventually we will split and have a separate space for just landscape astro.
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Images must be an accurate representation of a real astronomical object.
- II | Original and Amateur Content Only
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Image posts can only be images that you have captured and processed yourself, or discussion about capturing and/or processing your own images.
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Images acquired from public sources, professional observatories, or other professional services are not allowed.
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If you have done a drastic alteration or reprocessing of a prior submission, you may repost your edit - but only after a minimum of one week has passed.
- III | Post Types
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Image posts are to link directly to the image, not to landing pages, personal galleries, blogs, or professional sites. Link to these in the comments. (AstroBin and Imgur, are allowed)
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Questions are welcome here for the time being.
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Links to blogs, articles or external websites should be interesting and promote discussion about amateur astrophotography.
- IV | Titles
- All image posts should just include include the name of the object being photographed. Extra info such as equipment, it being your first image, or other information should go in a comment along with your acquisition info. Please see this page for more details.
If your post is removed, try reposting with a different title. Don't hesitate to message the mods if you still have questions!
- V | Acquisition and Processing Information
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All submitted images must include acquisition and processing details as a top-level comment. All posts without this information may be given a warning, and if not updated will be removed.
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This includes the telescope, mount, camera, accessories, and any other pieces of equipment you used to capture the image.
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You must also include processing details, i.e. the programs you used and a general rundown of the workflow/processes you used within those programs. “Processed in Photoshop” is not enough.
Yippie my comment never posted from last night! here's the writeup:
Decided to give this one a reshoot under darker skies. My shot of it from 2019 had a lot more light pollution and less exposure time than this pic. M46 also has a small planetary nebula, NGC 2438, in the cluster. Captured on November 23rd, 2025 from a bortle 3 zone (Deerlick Astronomy village)
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TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
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Orion Sirius EQ-G
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ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
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Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
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ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
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Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
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Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
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Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
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ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding
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Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 1h 14m minutes (Camera at -15°C)
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L - 20x90"
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R - 10x90"
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G - 10x90"
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B - 9x90"
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Darks- 30
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Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
- Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
PixInsight Preprocessing:
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BatchPreProcessing
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StarAlignment
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Blink
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ImageIntegration per channel
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DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
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Dynamic Crop
linear:
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)
$T * med(model) / model
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BlurXterminator (correct only)
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STF applied via HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
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Channelcombination to make color image from RGB stacks
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SpectrophotometricColorCalibration
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HSV Repair
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ArcsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch L and RGB images nonlinear nonlinear
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Slight curves saturation boost for the RGB image
Nonlinear processing:
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LRGBCombination with stretched L image as luminance
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DeepSNR noise reduction
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Lots of curve transformations
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Slight SCNR to remove greens from some stars
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more curves
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Resample to 65%
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Annotation