Probably out of focus.
Still worth stacking.
Late nights. Distant light.
A little software to bring it all together.
This is why I stay up.
View all 19 photographs
NGC 7380 · The Wizard Nebula in SHO
Two nights at Jordan Lake, North Carolina, October 6–7 and 7–8, 2026. I chose the wider frame to keep the Wizard in its surrounding star field and faint clouds. Askar 120APO with 0.8× reducer, ZWO ASI2600MC Air and AM5N mount, Askar Super D1/D2 filters and separate UV/IR-cut broadband stars. D1: 30 × 300 s; D2: 30 × 300 s; broadband stars: 40 × 30 s. Total integration: 5 hours 20 minutes, Bortle 5, gain 100, offset 50, −10°C. Stacked in Siril with the NaZtronomy workflow; GraXpert background extraction; PixInsight alignment, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator and NoiseXTerminator. Sulfur maps to red, hydrogen to green and oxygen to blue. Broadband stars calibrated with SPCC and recombined. A localized star-removal residual was corrected in the final image.
NGC 7023 · The Iris Nebula
Two nights at Jordan Lake, hundreds of short exposures, and a blue Iris emerging from a field of dark dust. Captured with my Seestar S30 Pro from the Big Woods Road area at Jordan Lake, North Carolina, over October 6–7 and October 7–8, 2026. The finished stack combines 722 thirty-second broadband exposures: 6 hours and 1 minute of collected light under Bortle 5 skies. Capture: Seestar S30 Pro • IRCUT filter • gain 200 Processing: Siril with the NaZtronomy Smart Telescope script and 1× drizzle, crop, plate solving and SPCC; GraXpert background extraction; PixInsight with BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator, MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch and gentle local contrast. Stars processed separately and recombined.
IC 5070 · The Pelican Nebula in SHO
My first SHO image: 3 hours 55 minutes of light from Jordan Lake, captured with my Askar 120APO and ASI2600MC Air through Super D1 and D2 filters.
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I’m Paul, an engineer and astrophotographer. This is where I share what I capture and the tools I’m building along the way.
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