I had like 5 seconds of panic because there was a gray spot in my vision after I accidentally looked at a baileys bead completely unfiltered through my telescope the second the eclipse ended. Turns out I just had a smudge on my glasses :P
I totally didn't procrastinate processing this thing, and it's just pure coincidence that I finally took a stab at it in October...
In hindsight, this really could've used another night of data (particularly the L), but I only had one clear night at the dark site. I was just happy to get out of the light pollution and shoot a dark nebula for once! Captured on August 17th, 2025 from a bortle 3 zone (deerlick astronomy village).
Acquisition: 7 hours 21 minutes (Camera at -15°C), half unity gain
L - 56x180"
R - 30x180"
G - 30x180"
B - 31x180"
Darks- 30
Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
PixInsight Preprocessing:
BatchPreProcessing
StarAlignment
Blink
ImageIntegration per channel
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
For the L channel I did 3 stacks each with 1/3rd of the data, then combined them to an RGB image (was still grayscale) to use deepSNR noise reduction. after this it was properly converted to mono
Are you moving the mount in just one axis? Or doing both RA and DEC movements at the same time? You might also want to dither more frequently, especially with how many 30” subs you can get in a half hour. Even that amount of walking noise will add up
Pretty good for a phone! I’m guessing it’s doing some kind of stacking process? I think there would be some streaking with a single 4 min exposure, but your stars look nice and sharp
Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. Idc if I’m a man in his late 20’s I’m putting my heart and soul into it