Session reports from actual DWARF 3 imaging runs on deep sky targets including galaxies, emission nebulae, reflection nebulae, and star clusters. Each post documents the target, capture settings, sky conditions, processing workflow, and what the data revealed.
The Veil Nebula is light that left its source somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, and it’s still arriving as some of the finest, most delicate filament structure in the sky.…
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, IC1396, is a dark cloud with dozens of new stars condensing inside it right now, lit along one edge by a neighboring star system bright enough to set…
The Crescent Nebula, NGC 6888, is a shell of glowing gas being shaped right now by a star passing through one of the shortest, rarest stages in a massive star’s life, and…
Our own galaxy is the one target I could never actually see. From my Bortle 6 backyard the Milky Way is barely a rumor, a faint brightening low over Cygnus on the…
I had 21.5 hours of data on the Squid Nebula and a decision to make: keep shooting it, or give up and point the scope somewhere else. Ou4 is one of the…
The light in this image of the Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946) left its source about 25.2 million years ago. When the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, those photons had already…
I ran 1h 14m on NGC 4565, the Needle galaxy C38, mostly as a check before committing real time to my hunt for the Squid Nebula. The Needle galaxy is the kind…
The plan for the week was the Squid, but the Squid needs darkness and it needs hours, more hours than one clear-but-not-clear-for-long night was going to give me. So I pointed the…
What You Will Learn In this post I share my February 2026 DWARF 3 image of M78 nebula (aka the friendly ghost nebula), a reflection nebula in Orion. I cover what makes…
A 1 hour 46 minute DWARF 3 session on the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) using the Duo-Band filter under Bortle 6 skies. Documents the altitude constraint of imaging a southern target from…
