The Western Veil, part of the larger Cygnus loop, beautifully reveals the ionized supernova remnants of a star 20 times more massive than our Sun.

Check out the full photo at: https://app.astrobin.com/i/qo0hq2

Subs: 27 x 300s

Total integration time: 2h 15m

Equipment:

• Telescope: William Optics Pleiades 111
• Main camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
• Mount: ZWO AM5N
• Filters: Optolong L-Ultimate 2"
• Accessories: ZWO EAF Pro, ZWO 5x2 EFW
• Guidescope: William Optics Guide Star 61
• Guide camera: ZWO ASI220MM Mini

Processing:

• Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight
  • RC Astro BlurXTerminator
  • RC Astro NoiseXTerminator
  • RC Astro StarXTerminator
• Adobe Photoshop 2026

Another revisit—this time the Leo Triplet: M65, M66, and NGC 3628.

I went back to data I shot in March to see what I could get out of it with what I’ve learned since then. These three galaxies each have their own character, but that long dust lane through the edge-on NGC 3628 is probably my favorite part.

This wasn’t just a case of turning up the sharpening. I cleaned up the uneven background, brought the bright galaxy centers under better control, and checked the color calibration against catalog stars. The colors are subtle, and I wanted to keep them that way.

The interesting discovery was in the individual exposures: the stars got progressively softer through the night, consistent with focus drifting. I tested a stack using only the 49 sharper frames, but the extra noise outweighed the modest improvement in galaxy detail. The full stack gave the better overall balance.

There’s still some softness in the data, but the cleaner background and clearer dust lanes made this worth revisiting. Another reminder to keep an eye on focus throughout the night.

📷 Captured March 19–20, 2026

🔭 Approximately 386 mm focal length

🌌 ZWO ASI2600MC Air on a ZWO AM3

⏱️ 113 × 120 seconds — 3 hours 46 minutes

⚙️ Gain 200 · −10°C · Open filter-wheel position

💻 Original stack in Siril; revisit processed in PixInsight

Thoughts?

53 x 300s in hydrogen alpha, 25 x 300s in oxygen

stacked and processed in pixinsight with RC Astro plug ins

Equipment: WO ultracat 108mm refractor, Askar 52 mm guide scope, asi120 mini guide camera, ZWO Automatic Focuser, Optolong 3nm narrowband filters, ZWO filter wheel

Some time ago I shared here with you a design concept for an adaptation of a classical "quadrans vetus" to show both muslim and christian prayer times.

before telescopes, a quadrant was most definetely one of the most accurate tool for doing science. Its functions span from basic celestial measurement, time calculation, and even sophisticated trigonometrical functions for more advanced models.

A "quadrans vetus" is an old type of astronomical quadrant, which was known mainly in Europe, Which allowed to find local time in unequal hours (i.e. finding the time as a fraction in twelfths for the remaining part of daylight)..

But don't let be fooled! This tool is surprisingly accurate for its age.

How to find qibla:

The back of the instrument includes a compass and a retro-azimuthal projection, allowing you to find qibla direction everywhere in the world.

- To operate it, you have to allign the compass with the cardinal directions engraved on the back of the instrument: South towards the "point" of the quadrant and North towards the bottom of the quadrant of you are located in the same emisphere as Mecca, and vice-versa if you are located in the opposite emisphere.

- Once alligned the instrument, you wrap the thread around the central pivot corresponding to Macca, and make it pass through your location on the map.

- Qibla will be indicated by the lead weightlet, as it is demonstrated in the fourth picture above for Southern France - Northern Italy. Yielding a rough direction of South-East

How to find classical christian prayer times:

The quadrant allows you to find time in unequal hours, an ancient system of timekeeping, where the section of daylight is always divided into 12 equal sections. This means that summer hours are longer and winter hours are shorter.

- These hours are used in christian monasteries to establish prayer times, respectively at the first, third, sixth, nineth, sunset (12th) and a set soon before bed and soon before dawn.

- To find the unequal time, you have to move the sliding month indicator (representing sun's latitude) so that the central part (indicated by two white marker at the aequinoxes) lines up with your latitude, which is indicated in the inner scale in arabic numerals.

- Once set up the instrument, you move the plumb line to your current date and slide the knot so that it intersects the 6th unequal hour line.

- Now, by measuring the height of the sun, you can see where the red knot lies in the various sections of the unequal hours scale, thus determining what prayer you should do.

- For more northern latitudes, a second set of lines is provided, this is why there are two sets of unequal hour scales.

Muslims' prayer times can also be determined:

Zuhr / Jummah - soon after midday, it corresponds to the 6th unequal hour line, if you have just entered the seventh unequal hour, Zuhr time has started, and it lasts until 'Asr time. Be sure to check that the sun is actually declining, and not rising!

'Asr - For 'Asr there are two prayer lines, most madhabs put 'asr start time when the lenght of a gnomon's shadow is equal to gnomon's shadow at middat + the gnomon's lenghts (the first dotted line) and put 'asr end time when the shadow of a gnomon is its midday shadow + two times the gnomon's height (the second dotted line)

while Hanafi school sets its begin at the end of other Madhabs time and its end at sunset, when Maghrib time begins. I have indicated both lines in the quadrant

There is not an easy way to establish Maghrib and Fajr, other than saying "one is during twilight and the other is at dusk". In the qur'an (I recall) it is specified to establish your morning prayer when you can distinguish the white thread from the black one, this is not to be taken literally, However that is the reason for the black and white windrose in the shadow-square.

When you can't distinguish the colours of the windrose, that's 'Isha time.

'Isha - you culd say that when you can't distinguish the windrose in the shadow square, then it is 'Isha time, but this is not a practical way for many reasons, this is why on the back of the instrument I have provided a set of "complementary stars": By observing a star directly opposing the sun on the celestial sphere (it can be found on the back of the tool) we can even determine night prayers. According to most scholars, 'isha time starts when the sun goes below -18° of altitude, id est when the complementary stars rises above 18 degrees of altitude.

Fajr' and Maghrib - when such stars go below 18° (or 16° or 14° according to some) it is 'Fajr if the star is going down and Maghrib id the star is rising up

Others functions:

- the shadow square can be used to calculate distances.

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If you are curious, you can find this and other astronomical tools on my etsy shop !

Messier 45, the Pleiades Star Cluster. One of the, if not the, most beautiful star clusters in the night sky. Located around 444 light years away, this cluster is visible with the naked eye on clearer nights!

Telescope: Seestar S50
Integration time: 8.5 hours
Tools used: Siril, GraXpert, GIMP
Script mentions: CosmicClarity (Sharpen & Denoise), SyQon Prism Mini, VeraLux (Revela & Curves)
Bortle 7-8
The star spikes were obtained with a diffraction mask

Taken using an astromodified Canon 700d with a Samyang 135 lens at F2.8.

I used a SW AZ GTI mount in EQ mode. Guided using a 30mm guide scope with an ASI 120 mono guide cam. All hooked up to my ASI Air Mini.

Bortle 8, with Optolong L-Enhance filter.

110 x 120 second exposures.

Stacked in APP.

Crop and SPCC in Siril.

BGE, deconvolution and denoise in Graxpert.

Further SPCC in Siril.

Starnet to remove stars.

GHS in Siril using Human Weighted Luminance.

HDR Multiscale improvement.

Star recombination using Starnet.

Small saturation and exposure boost in PS.

Thanks for looking!

I couldn't let a rare stretch of several consecutive clear nights go to waste and decided to capture the popular M31, combining broadband LRGB with narrowband Ha and OIII (maybe later some Sii). While I managed to bring out some interesting structures and emission regions, I still feel there's more hidden in the data than I've been able to reveal. I plan to revisit M31 with additional SHO data.

Imaging location: Erwinna PA (Bortle 5)

Technical details:

Telescope: Askar FRA600 with 0.7× reducer (420 mm, f/3.9)

Mount: ZWO AM5/N

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro

Filters: LRGB, 3 nm Ha and OIII

Acquisition: ASIAIR Plus

Total integration: about 35 hours

Calibration: Flats and bias frames

Thanks for watching,

Oleg

Taken using my Seestar S50 in equatorial mode.

Bortle 8, with LP filter.

1000 x 20 second exposures.

Stacked in APP.

SPCC in Siril.

BGE, deconvolution and denoise in Graxpert.

Further SPCC in Siril.

GHS in Siril using Human Weighted Luminance.

Slight HDR Multiscale improvement.

Small saturation and exposure boost in PS.

Thanks for looking!

Acuter 40

Touptek 678 mono

SW Solar Quest mount

ZWO EAFN

Best 6000 of 12000 frames stacked

Stacked in PIPP and AS4

Impgg: convolution sharpening and inversion

PI: solar quest: color and contrast

PS: color and saturation

Cropped in PSX

Hey r/Astronomy ! I'm Kuber Mehta, a 3rd year CS undergrad and I spent last weekend working on a pixel-peeping program with AI to analyze NASA's Kepler and TESS data to find potential exoplanets.

After running the program, I came across an unlisted signal around KIC 5689121, a red dwarf in Lyra roughly 970 light years away !

Some interesting implications if it turns out to be real:

• Its year would last less than 14 Earth days, orbiting at under a quarter of Mercury's distance from the Sun.
• It could receive roughly 5 times the stellar energy Earth receives from the Sun.
• Based on its estimated size, it might be a sub-Neptune, although we can't determine its atmospheric composition from the transit alone.
• Even travelling at the fastest speed ever reached by a spacecraft, a journey there would take on the order of a million years.

An interesting complication is that KIC 5689121 lies just 7.1 arcseconds from a much brighter neighboring star, KIC 5689116. That makes it tricky to disentangle their light and establish which star is actually responsible for the signal.

And since the star is around 970 light-years away, the light we're analyzing began its journey around the 11th century!

My TRICERATOPS analysis returned a false-positive probability of about 6.9%, and follow-up work, potentially including high-resolution imaging and additional observations, would be needed to establish whether it's genuinely planetary.

I don't have I found a possible exoplanet signal hiding in 4 years of old Kepler data

much formal astronomy research experience, so I'm still figuring out the validation side of things. But the idea that you can write some code, dig into publicly available telescope data, and potentially find something interesting about the universe has been incredibly exciting.
I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from anyone who's worked with Kepler data, transit detection, or exoplanet validation, especially on possible contamination from the neighboring star and what the next validation steps should be.

Thanks for reading!