
AstroWorldCreations
Distant galaxies, colourful nebulas and iconic planets.
This website is dedicated to amateur astrophotography, its equipment, techniques, processing and workflows.
A resource and inspiration for anyone interested in astronomy and photography.
Recent Images
Solar imaging has been in the works for a long time now. But I’m now far enough with my setup that I can actually make decent solar images. See here the first result with both a full disk image and a close-up of a prominence. Both images are also processed as timelapse video. A lot of room for improvement, but off to a good start.
Messier 53 is a globular cluster located in the constellation Coma Berenices. It is one of the most distant globular clusters associated with the Milky Way, lying approximately 58,000 light-years from Earth. M53 is often observed alongside its neighbouring globular cluster, NGC 5053, which lies nearby in the sky.
Messier 67 is an open star cluster located in the constellation Cancer. It is one of the oldest known open clusters, with an estimated age of around 4 billion years, making it significantly older than most other open clusters in the Milky Way. M67 is situated approximately 2,700 light-years from Earth and contains over 500 stars, many of which are similar in age and composition to the Sun.
Sh2-230 is an H II region in the constellation Auriga, approximately 6,800-9,800 light-years from Earth. The nebula spans 16–26 light-years in diameter. The large region known as Sh2-230, but within this region, there are many more, often better known objects, such as M36, M38, Sh2-229, Sh2-234 and Sh2-236 ad Sh2-237.
Messier 109 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major, approximately 83.5 million light-years from Earth. It is one of the brightest galaxies in the Ursa Major Cluster. M109 is notable for its prominent central bar structure. The galaxy has a magnitude of about 9.8. It spans roughly 180,000 light-years in diameter, making it slightly larger than the Milky Way.
Arp 41 is a grand design spiral galaxy located in the constellation Eridanus, approximately 60 to 65 million light-years away from Earth. It is part of Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a catalog of unusual and distinctive galaxies. It includes a smaller, irregular companion galaxy, NGC 1232A, which appears to be interacting gravitationally with the main galaxy.
Caldwell 2, also known as NGC 40 or the Bow-Tie Nebula, is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Cepheus. The nebula is approximately 3,500 light-years away from Earth. It is a very small object, with an apparent diameter of only 0.9 arcmin.
Caldwell 48, also known as NGC2775, is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Cancer. It is a so-called flocculent spiral galaxy, meaning the arms are patchy and discontinuous, giving them a fluffy or woolly appearance.
Messier 48 is an open star cluster in the constellation Hydra, the Water Snake. The cluster is situated approximately 1,500 light-years from Earth, making it one of the clusters closest to our solar system. M48 contains roughly 80 stars, most of which are young, hot, blue-white main-sequence stars.
Caldwell 23, also known as NGC 891, is a spiral galaxy located approximately 30 light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. Its striking edge-on appearance has given it the nickname Silver Sliver galaxy. The galaxy is very similar in structure to our own Milky Way.
M79 is a small globular cluster in the constellation of Lepus. It maximally rises only 28° above the horizon, so is on the edge of what can be imaged from the observatory in Spain. Still an overall 12h of data has been collected in December 2024 and January 2025.
M37 is the brightest open cluster in the constellation of Auriga. Many of its 500 stars are fairly young bright blue stars, but the big star in the center (HD39183) is a yellow giant. M37 is photographed here during two consecutive full moon periods in December 2024 and January 2025 respectively.
Sh2-292 is an emission nebula in the constellation Canis Major. It is the head of te Seagull nebula. Most images will show the full Seagull nebula using a fairly wide field setup. But the Sh2-292 designated area is only referring to the head, which is shown here in an SHO palette.
Recent Blog Posts
The year 2024 marked a significant change in my astrophotography hobby, by moving one of my setups to a remote hosting facility in Spain. This resulted in an almost 10-fold increase in activity and 39 published images. Check out this blog for the details.
My system at the remote observatory is highly over-sampled. How bad is that, and does it make sense to bin the data? This blog will answer those questions, based on a recent image of the Crescent Nebula. This also allowed a comparison with historic and properly sampled data.
When processing OSC images several colour artefacts keep coming back. In most cases it is not very difficult to remove them in post-processing. In this blog some tips and tricks with examples and workflow on how to remove some of them.
After six years of imaging from my backyard, the decision was made to move one of the rigs to a remote hosting site. In a number of blog-posts you can follow along on this journey. Part 1 is about goals, site selection and hard- and software. Part 2 is about design and remote controlling tools while in part 3 everything was put together and tested. This Part 4 is all about moving to and installation at the remote site, calibration and first light.
After six years of imaging from my backyard, the decision was made to move one of the rigs to a remote hosting site. In a number of blog-posts you can follow along on this journey. Part 1 described the goals, site selection and general considerations around software and hardware. Part 2 focused on the design and tools used to control the rig and how to do that remotely. Part 3 will show how everything has been built and tested. The system is now ready to be shipped.
After six years of imaging from my backyard, the decision was made to move one of the rigs to a remote hosting site. In a number of blog-posts you can follow along this journey into the unknown. Part 1 was about goals and site selection. Part 2 describes the design and tools used to control the rig and how to do that remotely.
After six years of imaging from my backyard, I have decided to move one of the rigs to a remote hosting site. In a number of blog-posts you can follow along on this journey. Part 1 describes the reasons behind the decision, the selection of a hosting site, goals and some higher level consequences for software and equipment.
Making a horizon file can be labour intensive. With this app, the task is made a lot easier. In this example the information is used to create a horizon file for Astroplanner, the very versatile application to plan and record observations and imaging sessions
Traditionally telescope rigs are powered using 12VDC from bricks, wall adapters and power banks. But now that USB Power Delivery has become a mainstream solution to power laptops, screens etc, would it be any good to power an astrophotography rig? In this blog we will try to find out.
Recently the observatory was upgraded with a rolling pier. This allows a fully assembled system to be rolled-in and rolled-out the house in a fraction of the time than before. Read here my experiences with the S130 rolling pier and how it greatly improved the efficiency and productivity.
Latest News
PixInsight, the leading image processing software in astrophotography , has released a new version, 1.9, called Lockhart. This update brings many new features and improvements to simplify astrophotography image processing.
Takahashi has launched two Ortho Extender sets (2x and 4x). They are compatible with most Takahashi telescopes and serve as alternatives to Barlow lenses for viewing or imaging the moon, sun, and planets.
Takahashi just released a new telescope. It is a compact 400mm f/6.2 triplet scope, that can be reduced to a 260mm f/4.0 imager. The scope is designed for astrophotography.
Astrobin, the well known hosting site for astro images, just started a Marketplace. Any Astrobin user can list his/her astrogear that is for sale.
Franklin Marek from SetiAstro has started to write scripts for PixInsight. Currently five scripts are available, but development goes very fast. Scripts follow a statistical approach for certain steps in the image processing workflow and very easy to use.
The free gradient removal tool GraXpert has added AI-based noise reduction. The tool is very simple to use, with essentially one slider to dial in the strength. For PixInsight users, the tool is now also available as a process rather than a scrip.
The AI-based tool BlurXTerminator was a revolution when it was released a year ago. Now version 2 has been released, and again the improvements are revolutionary once again. The way BXT is now able to correct for all kind of optical defects such as aberrations, coma, astigmatism, etc. is mind-blowing.
An aberration inspector to analyse sensor tilt and backfocus distance has come to KStars/Ekos. In the December release (version 3.6.8), John Evans has introduced a tool that will make properly aligning the optical train a lot easier.
GraXpert 2.0, a tool for automated background extraction, brings two important improvements. First it is now based on an AI-model, which significantly enhances the final results. Secondly, it is now available as a script right within PixInsight.
Mike Cranfield and Adam Block created a new tool to create colourful NB images. Each filter is assigned a layer with a colour rather than a channel. Layers are then blended together with a lot of fine-control, all with a real-time preview showing the final results immediately.
Images
This is what it’s ultimately all about, images of the night sky. Most are deep-sky objects, such as nebulae and galaxies. But there’s also place for objects from our solar system, such as planets and comets. Each image will have a short description of the object, as well as detailed information on capturing and processing.
Observatory
Most of the images are captured from the backyard observatory (a.k.a. garden), using a mobile setup. In this section you will find detailed information on the equipment used, practical details on the way it is setup, and the command and control systems that allow the system to run throughout the night, unsupervised.
Blog
Astrophotography involves many challenges related to the technical aspects of a high-precision instrument, the endurance of hours and hours of exposures, and bringing the images to life in processing. In this blog you will find tips, tricks and general experiences. Read just for fun, to learn or to get inspired.
Contact
It would be really great to hear from you! Feedback, comments, questions, just leave your name, email and message here, and I will get back to you shortly.
On 29 March 2025, a partial solar eclipse was visible from the West of Europe and the East of North America. From Groningen, a maximum coverage of about 25% was reached around mid-day. While clouds prevented a continuous experience, some nice images and even a full timelapse of the event was created.