This was the very first deep-sky target I ever photographed back in 2022—and I’ve finally come back to do it right. Using my Redcat 51 and ASI533MM, I was able to fit both the North America and Pelican Nebulae in one frame after years of thinking it wasn’t possible. With nearly 10 hours of integration through narrowband filters, this new version captures the fine detail, glowing oxygen, and dense star field I could only dream of back then.
My Take: SHO vs. Dynamic Narrowband Combinations in Pixinsight
I recently created a video walking through my process of using both SHO and dynamic narrowband combinations when processing images in Pixinsight. This post puts that video in written form. If you want to watch the video, I have it embedded at the bottom of the post.
The Cosmic Seagull: Capturing IC 2177
This was my final winter target, The Seagull Nebula. I’ve been wanting to shoot this for years and I finally got around to it.
The Orion Nebula M42 & Pixinsight Walkthrough
I’ve been doing astrophotography for 2 years now and although I’ve tried shooting the Orion Nebula before, I never fully produced an image until now. It’s one of the most popular targets, a favorite of beginners, and ironically complicated to shoot and process!
Jellyfish Nebula IC 443
The Jellyfish Nebula IC 443 is fun to photograph wide field because of its surrounding environment, specifically, the cloud that looks like it’s coming out of its head. I shot this for 10 hours and used some fun techniques in Pixinsight. These techniques included layering my Ha as a luminance layer over the RGB image and using morphological transformation to reduce the noisy star field from my under-sampled setup.
Shooting Pleiades in Light Pollution
I shoot in light polluted skies outside New York City and although the Pleiades stars are bright, capturing its accompanying dust and reflection nebula is a challenge.
Heart & Soul Nebula Mosaic
The Heart & Soul Nebula mosaic was my first astrophotography mosaic. I decided on IC 1805 and IC 1848 because they were close enough to only require a 2 panel mosaic with my setup.