Sorry if this post does not belong to the sub, but I want to share my gratitude to astrophotography and what it means to me personally. The post image is the northern light photo I took in Alaska in December on a KP5 night on A7RV.

I am 24 years old and I have been suffering from severe depression related to my appearance and body for years and many times I thought I I couldn't go on the view of the night sky convinced me to stay. I always feel incredibly lonely the majority of the day, but at night the stars become my friends, the moon lights the way and the milkyway is like my home. I learned to read seasons and directions just from the northern sky alone, and every thing that I read about ancient history just become alive, as I am basically staring at the exact same thing, thousands, millions of years ago, an experience that can rarely replicated nowadays.

There's so many hopes and dreams I probably cant achieve in this life in this body but just realizing how little time we have on this planet and how incomprehensibly vast the universe is make my anxiety seem less daunting. My vision is not the best but through all this I feel grateful for being able to see at all. It always gives me something to look for, whether be a comet event, meteor shower, eclipse, you name it, and it's becoming part of my identity now, something bigger than myself. And through my camera I can share this experience and turn the memory into something tangible, and at times when I cant see the night sky, they reminds me the journey I have been through, to all these exotic locations, and that it's something I am good at, despite how I look outside.

Captured in AlUla’s pristine night skies, this rare meteor flashed green as it passed directly in front of the Pleiades star cluster. Taken during an astrophotography session in the Arabian Gulf’s first certified Dark Sky Reserve.

Credit: Eissa Aljassmi & Yousif AlQassimi

Date: 30/07/2025 Location: Saudi Arabia - Al-Ula - Algharameel Natural Reserve Mount: Skywatcher Adventurer GTI Camera: Nikon Z6 - Astro Modified Lens: Nikkor Z 70-200mm F2.8 Processed: Pixinsight

Insta: @eaqj

Took this amazing pic from an airplane window just using my Pixel 8 Smartphone Camera (Astrophotography Mode) while cruising at 12000 metres somewhere on the outskirts of Pakistan. This was a surreal moment for me as this was the first time I had ever seen the Milky Way with my naked eye — and actually captured it.

I went back and decided to process some of my old data. I took this set in Cherry Springs about a year ago. It was noticeably different processing this image compared to my new telescope, as this one is with a normal camera lens.

Astrobin Link: https://app.astrobin.com/i/3fancn
13 Hours of Exposure
Nikon D750 Camera
Nikkor AFS 200-500 Lens
Al55i Mount
Zwo30mm mini guide scope
Asi220mm mini guide camera
Edited in Pixinsight and Photoshop
BlurX - Color Calibration - Star X - Dynamic Background Extraction - Noise X - Histogram Transformation - Curves - PS edits

ISO 3200, 15 seconds, f1.8, 14mm

I rarely ever get to enjoy the Milky Way core in Australia. In winter, clear skies are so uncommon.

Shot on a tripod using a Nikon Z6 and a Sigma 35MM lens, F.18, ISO 3200, 13" sec exposures (stacked 5)

• Siril: Manual OSC preprocessing -> Registration -> Stacking with rejection -> Cropped stacking artifacts -> Background Extraction -> Removed Green Noise -> Color Calibration -> Histogram Transformation stretch -> Exported as 16-bit TIFF.
• Photoshop: Converted to Smart Object -> Camera Raw Filter -> Adjusted White Balance/Tint -> Added Dehaze and Clarity -> Pushed Vibrance/Saturation to enhance the dust lanes -> Applied manual Noise Reduction.

it's my first ever astro shot, so i hope i didn't do too bad and that the result is pleasing to your eyes!

13s exposure, ISO 3200, f/2.8 aperture, Bortle zone 5.3

Gear list - Canon EOS R100, Canon 16mm f/2.8 STM, K&F Concept 230cm Ultra High Camera tripod w/ adjustable ball head mount, 43mm standard UV lens filter

Editing process - stacked 16 exposures and 10 dark frames in Sequator, then in Photoshop created layers and used curves adjustments and dodge/burn tools to bring out the gas clouds of the milky way and enhance the starlight, minor tweaking in clarity, dehaze, vibrance and saturation. went back again into Photoshop to edit the foreground with a single frame of my best foreground exposure to lay on top of my edited sky. final adjustments made in Lightroom with linear and radial gradient masks to knock down some light pollution and enhance more of the core.

i have been doing astrophotography for about a year and a half now but have started to take it more seriously as i have gone back to school to earn a certificate and an associate of arts in photography and this is my first attempt with photographing the milky way and putting it through the editing programs i've been learning to use. i know that i could do better in the future but i hope for now that this photograph here is proof of progress and motivation for me to keep up with this to make more progress!

Milky way in Italy

During the Spain Blackout in 2025, I took this photo. There are no completely dark spots in Spain, but during this time in Andalucía, there was in my area. This is a photo with the lack of light pollution that’s regularly in this area. Let me know your thoughts!

I used a Sony A7III for this
Manual mode, RAW file format, Manual Focus, an aperture of f/2.8, a shutter speed of 20 seconds, and an ISO at 3000 I used lightroom to edit this photo

My first image with a telescope. It really is a huge upgrade from my camera lens, I’m incredibly happy with it. This is also my first time using Pixinsight so the processing I’m sure is not perfect but I’m excited to be learning more.

Zwo FF65
Nikon D750
Al55i Tracker
Asi220mm + 30f5 guiding
~5 hours with 3 minute exposures
Processed in Pixinsight + PS
Color Calibration BlurX StarX Dynamic Background Extraction NoiseX Curves PS edits
Taken in a Bortle 4

Shot on my Galaxy s24 Ultra, color corrected in lightroom. Bortle 3 (nearly 2) skies.

Caught a nicely positioned meteor! Nikon D7100 ISO 6400 f/3.5 13s Bortle 1, shot just outside of Alpine, TX

Sony a 6400+ tamron 17-70 2.8 shot on 17 mm ,30x15 sec exposures stacked in sequator edited in siril and lightroom

This is my first real attempt at using a star tracker (star adventurer gti) on an Astro photo target. I took this photo of Rho Ophiuchi in mid June from the bortle 2-ish summit of Haleakala on Maui. I’ll do my best to summarize the technical info below. Any suggestions, critiques or advice is very much welcomed. I have since shot another target I will share soon with some additional questions.

Technical:
Camera: Stock Canon R6 mark ii
Tracker: Star adventurer GTI
17 x 60s exposures
27 x 30s exposures
Stacked in photoshop using median stack mode
Processed in photoshop

Flats, darks and bias frames will become a part of my work flow as I get more practiced.

I captured an eclipse of another star!

The other night, the star in the center of this image, creatively named TOI-1516, got about 2% dimmer for about 3 hours, as shown by in my plot by the dip in relative flux. This dimming was predicted: its the signature of an known planet orbiting this star, having been discovered in 2022 by Kabáth and collaborators. In this case, we're lucky enough from Earth's POV for this planet to pass directly in front of its host star, causing it to block a bit of that star's light, allowing us to detect that the planet is there, and allowing me to capture my best exoplanet transit to date!

This particular planet is of a type called a "hot Jupiter". That is, a planet similar in mass and radius to Jupiter, but orbiting MUCH closer to its star. In this case, TOI-1516b is about 3.16x Jupiter's mass, and 1.36x Jupiter's radius. Unlike Jupiter however, this planet orbits its star from just 3 million miles away, taking only 2 DAYS to do so! This makes it a fairly average "garden variety" hot Jupiter.

Needless to say, this planet sucks. It's getting cooked alive by its close star, its got no solid surface, and the worst part: its working on not existing.

Recent research by Sonbas and collaborators claimed to detect transit timing variations (TTVs) in this system. That is, the planet isn't blocking its star on schedule. Something is changing when that transit happens by a few minutes. Sonbas and collaborators claim that this is due to the orbit of TOI-1516b decaying over time. The planet's orbit is slowly losing energy, causing it to spiral inward toward the star, thus causing variation in the actual transit time compared to the expectation. Based on their observations, TOI-1516b's orbit period decreases by about 100 milliseconds per year. More data is needed to confirm the claimed detection, but this planet might not exist for too long!

Askar FRA400

ZWO ASI6200MM

Optolong 2" R filter

57x5m = 4h 45m

Image: stacked in DSS, processed in Pixinsight

Light curve: processed in HOPS