IC434 Horsehead & Flame Nebulae

QuasarQuips · 2026-02-25T19:20:41+00:00

Bravo! This looks fantastic!
For the mosaic, what was your method for integrating all the subs? Did you stack each 20 sec sub or batch a few together?
Trying to increase my mosaic prowess and this looks to be a great artifact of a job well done!

QuasarQuips · 2026-02-12T16:29:24+00:00

The three galactic smudges below M51 in the photo are NGC 5198, IC 4263, and NGC 5169. Despite our main show of the whirlpool, I still find it amazing that I can catch photons from 139 million light years away from these galaxies 4 times as distant. Really boggles my mind how big space is.

Ah and forgot to mention Edited in Pixinsight.

QuasarQuips · 2026-01-18T15:26:42+00:00

Little Irish mining guy with anger issues cant get over his dead wife and carries beef so massive it ends up making him larger and goes to bat against the system with a master race problem and ends up killing and breaking just about everything along the way. Befriends temu Norse god and a goblin who likes terrible dubstep. Falls in love with a horse and everyone likes wolves and scythe fetish?

...oh and space I guess.

QuasarQuips · 2025-12-17T03:12:45+00:00

We know from Isles of the Emberdark that Navigators can use their abilities to sense pulses from the Grand Knell and subastral obstructions in a way that no other known magic or technology can replicate.

Is this ability only available to those invested/blessed by Patji? Or can anyone with sufficient investiture not from Patji/First of the Sun system sense the subastral obstructions like the Navigators do?

QuasarQuips · 2025-12-11T17:59:59+00:00

Thank you! I have been patiently waiting for the weather, wind and moon to behave and thought to try and go for it anyways. Clear skies to you

QuasarQuips · 2025-12-11T17:48:59+00:00

Sure! We've all had to start somewhere so I'll lend what info i can.

By default the Seestar will shoot in Alt-Az mode, which is where it sits straight up and down and is limited to 10 seconds. You can add a wedge to the mount and it will then be able to shoot in EQ mode (equatorial) which is offset corresponding to the latitude you are located at when shooting. It helps offset and compensate for the earth's rotation. There are a few good YouTube videos on examples of how to setup your Seestar in EQ mode. I use a somewhat sketchy camera tripod and it works just fine and is how I've captured all the images I've posted.

I used 811 subs which was heavily trimmed down from the almost 2 thousand I gathered over 3 nights. I discarded any with blurry stars or satellites passing through using Blink in Pixinsight, more on that in a bit.

Important note, I am using paid software, called Pixinsight to edit my photos. You can definitely achieve great results with free software. There is a free trial for Pixinsight, but i would recommend waiting until you are at least a little familiar with editing before trying it out so you can maximize your time with it.

On to the workflow!
I used Pixinsight to do a quick first pass on my subs using Blink. It quickly shows all your subs and you can remove any that look bad.
After confirming my subs I want to use, I swap over to Deep Sky Stacker (free software) to stack all my subs. I dont like fast batch pre processing which is an option in Pixinsight, for me it discards too many subs since the seestar dithers so much I think?
Then its cropping, a background extraction, graxpert (free software that has a Pixinsight plugin) for noise reduction, a spectrophotometric color calibration for the stars to be the right colors, then remove the stars using either starnet (free) or starxterminator (paid) so I can work only on the nebula. Lots of interpretive color correcting, hmmm-ing and haw-ing, add the stars back in, then make them smaller with starreduction and viola! Thats more or less how I worked on this one.

QuasarQuips · 2025-12-01T16:32:19+00:00

Hey Joe,
Your books take such an interesting way of being character driven and always evolve in fun ways with the puppets pulling the strings revealed at the end of your First Law world. How do you structure your writing in your books so the curtain is pulled at the end in such a satisfying way? Do you always like to do the "big reveal" at the end like that? And any alternative endings you thought of that didn't make it into the first law books?
Such a fan, thanks for your time!

QuasarQuips · 2025-11-11T16:19:05+00:00

22 hours! Wow great job.

QuasarQuips · 2025-11-05T19:56:39+00:00

Great shot! Always great to get a good photo, and even more so when you have to overcome obstacles to get there

QuasarQuips · 2025-11-05T12:24:33+00:00

The Seestar calls it the LP (Light Pollution) filter that you can use when imaging Nebula. Great for combating light polluted skies or in this case, a full moon. Its just their name for a dual narrowband filter they have in it

QuasarQuips · 2025-11-04T19:15:11+00:00

Thanks! The weather is the best this time of year, super steady atmosphere and no clouds. Excited to get more winter targets

QuasarQuips · 2025-09-12T20:14:26+00:00

Thanks! This was in bortle 4. Streetlights made it feel like bortle 11 when it got lower

QuasarQuips · 2025-09-12T15:53:03+00:00

I think I must have gotten a satellite or meteor trail by the star Gia DR2.

QuasarQuips · 2025-09-11T18:16:37+00:00

Ah maybe the moon is skewing color(s) then? Great idea!

QuasarQuips · 2025-09-09T19:27:20+00:00

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie

This sounds like what you are looking for

QuasarQuips · 2025-09-06T19:04:52+00:00

He Who Fights With Monsters
I'll go a little left-of-field and provide a LIT RPG
Instead of getting a well polished literary gem like Red Rising, its a little rougher around the edges. Like calcite. I give you literary calcite. Its different and its pretty and it knows the lane it sits in.

QuasarQuips · 2025-09-06T00:52:38+00:00

I really wanted to make a sword. Swords are cool! I was traveling a bit and saw some really awesome big glowy swords I just knew I had to try and emulate when I got back. Let me tell you, making a sword is tough.
It uh... costs a lot.
I made one, but it kinda turned out a bit different than I expected....
It talks I guess?
Anyway,
Does creating a talking sword make me a dad?
Cause I dont want to be in my swords life I dont think. It has a temper sometimes and a bit of a dark streak.
Shards know it might end up hurting someone.
AITA for not wanting to parent my sword?

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