Decided to just shoot a semi-random part of Cygnus. The large extended Ha region in Cygnus is unofficially called Smaug, and this is a photo specifically of the area around LBN 325/326. The nebulosity in this pic is false color, but the stars are true color RGB. I really love how this turned out with the narrowband palette, especially with the Oiii region on the right side looking almost like a true color Ha region. Captured over a shitload of nights from Aug-Oct 2024 from a bortle 9 zone.

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 57 hours 40 minutes (Camera at -15°C), NB exposures at unity gain and BB at half unity

• Ha - 111x600"

• Oiii - 127x600"

• Sii - 94x600"

• R - 48x60"

• G - 48x60"

• B - 44x60"

• 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)

• Dynamic Crop

• 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

Narrowband Linear:

• Blur and NoiseXTerminator

• StarXterminator to completely remove stars (to be later replaced by the RGB ones)

• HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear

RGB Linear:

• ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R G and B frame into color image

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• BlurXTerminator for star sharpening (correct only)

• HSV Repair

• StarXterminator to generate a stars-only image

• ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear (to be combined with starless narrowband image later)

• Invert > SCNR > invert to remove magentas

• Curves to saturate the stars a bit more

Nonlinear:

• PixelMath to combine monochrome Ha Oiii and Sii images into a color image with Jimmy’s Royale Palette

R = 0.3*Oiii+0.7*(Oiii^~(0.7*Ha+0.3*Sii))^1.2

G = ((Oiii*Ha)^~(Oiii*Ha))*Ha + _((Oiii*Ha)^(Oiii*Ha))*Sii

B = 0.9*Sii+Ha-Oii

• NoiseX again

• Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc

• more curves

• Extract L --> LRGBCombination for chrominance noise reduction

• even more curves

• Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier

This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)

mtf(.005,

mtf(.995,Stars)+

mtf(.995,Starless))

• Couple final curves

• Resample to 60%

• Annotation

0, I’m just raw dogging /all (minus whomever .world is defederated from)

Med student here. I probably would’ve failed a lot of in house exams/step 1 if I didn’t use anki. IMO it’s best for solidifying knowledge and quick recall of facts, but doing a shitload of practice questions is the best way to apply what you’ve memorized through anki (this last bit is most applicable to med school/mcat prep).

Really the main cost with it is your time. If you miss a day or two it can be daunting to get back in the groove and work on your review backlog. I usually have enough downtime during the day and time on the shitter to get through my reviews + whatever new cards I add. Anki itself is free but they do have a paid iOS app that I got just to use whenever I had a few mins of spare time.

As for the learning curve, this will vary if you’re making your own cards vs using a premade deck for a large standardized exam. Once you know the formatting it isn’t that difficult to make cloze cards for what you’re trying to learn.

The starliner astronauts are still up there (and will be until they return on the crew 9 capsule in February). This is the crew that went up before them returning to earth

Holy fuck they did it

Mildew is ‘eepin

Got the flu and had to cancel my birthday movie party. Most of my friends went to go see the movie anyway. It was the Bee Movie

That shot of the forward thrusters is great!

Some nice colors in the sky If you’re north enough. Sadly I doubt this will be as strong as the aurora back in May, but maybe one day well get them down in Atlanta again

NGC 4490 is a galaxy colliding with the smaller NGC 4485 galaxy, and both are about 25 million light years away. This image was taken with a monochrome camera through filters for luminance (all visible light), red, green, blue, and Hydrogen-alpha (656nm), which were combined into a color image. The Hydrogen-alpha was combined with red (described below) to make the HaLRGB image. The pink Ha regions are star forming nebulae within the galaxies. This got cropped out of the final pic, but I ended getting some gorgeous diffraction spikes on this star near the edge of the full FOV

Places where I host my other images:

Flickr | Instagram

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 27 hours 37 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)

• Ha - 128x360"

• Lum - 464x60"

• Red - 152x60"

• Green - 150x60"

• Blue - 123x60"

• Flats- 30 per filter

• 24 JimmyFlats per broadband filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing (with premade JimmyFlats)

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• DynamicCrop

• DynamicBackgroundExtraction

duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)

$T * med(model) / model

Luminance:

• BlurXTerminator

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

RGB:

• ChannelCombinaiton to combine monochrome R, G, B stacks into color image

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)

• HSV Repair

making clean Ha

loosely following this guide

This basically subtracts any broadband signal from the Ha pic, leaving only the Ha emission, which is then combined in with the red and a little bit of the blue channels

• PixelMath to isolate just Ha

Ha-Q * (Red-med (Red)), Q=0.75

• PixelMath to add Ha into RGB image

Red = $T+B*(Ha_Clean - med(Ha_Clean))

Green = $T

Blue = $T+B0.2(Ha_Clean - med(Ha_Clean))

B variable = 0.6 (this controls how strongly the Ha is added)

Nonlinear

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring HaRGB image nonlinear

• MLT for large scale chrominance noise reduction

• shitloads of curve transformations to adjust lightness, contrast, saturation, etc (with various luminance and star masks)

• slight SCNR to remove some greens

• LRGBCombination with stretched Luminance

• DeepSNR

• more curves

• ColorSaturation to slightly desaturate the Ha regions (they were very pink compared to the rest of the galaxy

• slight noisexterminator

• LocalHistogramEqualization

• even more curves

• Resample to 75%

• DynamicCrop onto just the galaxy

• annotation

I guess my astrophotography hobby has cancelled out my drinking and porn hobbies lol

Iirc the original goal was ‘at least 10’ but maybe up to 100 flights for a booster. No way to really know without flying them a lot

It’s definitely real, at least for the amateur astronomy subs I (used to) mod. I suspect a lot of the traffic to askastrophotography or telescopes is from people googling stuff and browsing though mobile web, but since /r/astrophotography is just photos, most are just on the app

Probably varies a bit from sub to sub, but old reddit users are a clear minority. The vast majority use the app

Mildew is trying to sleep in today

NASA is still doing a seat exchange and launching Johnny Kim on the next Soyuz in March, but it looks like it’ll be just Russians on at least the next 2 Soyuz’s after that

It may not be as big or well known as the other well known cluster in Hercules (M13), but it sure looks nice. Captured over 4 nights in July/August 2024 from a Bortle 9 zone

Places where I host my other images:

Instagram | Flickr

Equipment:

• TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian

• Orion Sirius EQ-G

• ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro

• Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector

• ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm

• Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm

• Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm

• Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope

• ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding

• Moonlite Autofocuser

Acquisition: 6 hours 55 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)

• Lum - 209x60"

• Red - 78x60"

• Green - 62x60"

• Blue - 66x60"

• Flats- 30 per filter

• 24 JimmyFlats per filter

Capture Software:

• Captured using N.I.N.A.

PixInsight Processing:

• BatchPreProcessing (with premade JimmyFlats)

• StarAlignment

• Blink

• ImageIntegration

• DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)

• DynamicCrop

• 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

Luminance:

• BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

RGB:

• ChannelCombinaiton to combine monochrome R, G, B stacks into color image

• BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)

• SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration

• HSV Repair

• ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear

• Curves to saturate it a little

• MLT for large scale chrominance noise reduction

Nonlinear:

• LRGBCombination with stretched L as luminance

• DeepSNR Noise reduction

• Several CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc.

• Invert > SCNR > invert > SCNR to remove some greens and magentas

• More curves

• A little bit of noiseXterminator

• DynamicCrop in on the clustert

• Resample to 75%

• Annotation

A lot of those tubes run on the inside of the engine. They’re 3D printed into the engine walls as it’s being made

Oh no! Where will I go to see OF spam bots now???

Thanks! We won’t know the results for a couple weeks. The movie was dogshit!