Aleksey Shipilëv

Folks, "Feb 28 planetary parade" is full of AI slop. Half of the parade needs unobstructed 20° alt. Plus, it gets uncomfortably close to the sun; DO NOT EVEN TRY ANY OPTICS UNTIL SUN IS COMPLETELY GONE, I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH. And you need optics to resolve planets...

I knew you would approve ;)

Ye gods, I love buying second-hand stuff from fellow amateur hobbyists. You can clearly see they (we) sell things that we have taken good care of. Holding up my end of the bargain by sending back the acceptance test results when closing the transaction.

No Effort Productions: M42, Orion Nebula - AstroBin Was lazy to go out in the cold, so decided to test out how much you can get through the closed window. Completely lazy shot: hardly any precise polar alignment, no usual auto-focus routine, no guiding...

More "No Effort Productions" from last night. This time leaning heavily onto post-processing. I hate that it is not *that much* worse in comparison to one I shot freezing by bottoms off. app.astrobin.com/i/c8n2uc

Continuing to sift through "no effort" shots through the window from yesterday. He-e-e-e-e-ere is Horsie! Whooping 1 minute total exposure time. Internal reflections in 2-pane glass window from Alnitak and σ Ori as a bonus.

Но ведь "смазка эта треклятая всё равно везде" -- это ровно то, что ты хочешь от смазки! Лучше смазка где не надо, чем смазки нет там, где хрустит и скрежещет!

As I mentioned earlier, Orion Nebula is extremely forgiving target. You can get a decent shot out of it with the astrophotographic equivalent of a potato. Well, I guess you have to learn how to hold the potato right and steady for a few minutes, but that is not that hard either.

Clear night tonight, but I am too lazy to go out. So instead I made "no effort" quick shots directly through the closed (!) window, with barely any polar alignment, without guiding, etc. 50x5s live SharpCap stack (left) is already quite good. ...and a few touchups later (right):

Keep collecting data, stack the frames and then stretch them to peek into darker areas. On the picture above: single 30s frame, same 30s frame stretched, bunch of 60x30s frames stacked and stretched. Data hides in the dark, go and patiently hunt for it.

Tis' Orion season, which is a good starter target if you get into astrophotography. One thing you absolutely need to know: astrophoto is about total integration time, as you hunt for individual photons in darker areas. Don't be disappointed if your individual frames look dark...

Hubble Space Telescope Heritage: Horse Head Nebula - AstroBin This image is re-processed from the Hubble Space Telescope Heritage data:https://archive.stsci.edu/pub/hlsp/heritage/horsehead/Original FITS were stretched with the help of FITS Liberator to bring the...

More HST data re-processing, Horse Nebula this time: app.astrobin.com/i/o613bb. This is almost too easy with high quality data publicly available.

Hubble Space Telescope Heritage: Monkey Head Nebula - AstroBin This image is re-processed from the Hubble Space Telescope Heritage data:https://archive.stsci.edu/pub/hlsp/heritage/ngc2174/The files available there are already mosaic-ed and drizzled. The raw data ...

Gloomy cloudy days ahead with no clearing in sight, so I resort to processing Hubble Space Telescope, again. This one is (part of) Monkey Head Nebula. HST 2014 Anniversary picture was from the same data: app.astrobin.com/i/n910h0

We complain about light pollution for its impact on urban astronomy. But we almost never talk about the impact of public smoking compounded by cannabis legalization. The data does not lie: in Berlin, in the most depressing months of the year you get thick grey clouds for weeks!

REJOICE! It is January 2026, and I have finally managed to fix basic bleeding-edge builds for the b̸e̸s̸t̸ ̸ b̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶f̶o̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ m̴o̴s̴t̴ ̴s̴t̴a̴b̴l̴e̴ most popular JDK ever: JDK 8. Grab it while it is hot!
builds.shipilev.net/openjdk-jdk8/
builds.shipilev.net/openjdk-jdk8...

To be fair, I don't dwell on good outcomes either :)

"Dostoevsky's Demons and the Coming AGI Catastrophe": possessedmachines.com

Need to learn some Russian to read Dostoevsky's "Бесы" in original. Also learn some XIX century Russian history to contextualize it. Anything to avoid thinking about this essay. Oh wait, crap...

C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) - AstroBin Found and some (still incomplete) data from 2020. Reprocessed with my current PixInsight workflows.

Recovered 12 (!) 5s exposures for C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) from 5 years ago: app.astrobin.com/i/n8f57k -- I wish I could have stacked more...

Combining my largest aperture scope (EdgeHD 8") with my smallest pixel size sensor (ASI715MC) in preparation for high-res Jupiter and Moon shots. Shot in relative dark through a dirty window. Formally results in 0.15"/px, which is way below Dawes limit, but still usable.

IT industry: "Look, LOC added is the abhorrent measure of developer productivity; if anything we celebrate taking the code *out*". Also IT industry, somehow: "Look, our AI tool allows our developers to add 10 KLOC change within an hour, we have never been more productive!"

The real struggle is that internal laptop battery fails in -10C within an hour. 80% charge left after an hour, whomp, low battery, emergency shutdown. With external power, it can survive for at least 4 hours. LiFePo4 batteries capacity de-rates in cold too, but not as adversely.

Happy to report I have found the silliest off-the-shelf way to power my astrophoto laptop in the field with a stack of my usual LiFePo4 batteries. Cigarette lighter socket USB-PD adapter be like: relax bro, we are rated for high current, don't look at everything else in series.

Updated JOL and heapdump-estimates in it specifically to better support JDK 25. We use this tool to quickly glance where are the opportunities in our real services. Streaming heap dump analysis allows doing this on multi-hundred GB heap dumps. Builds: builds.shipilev.net/jol/

Jupiter up close (January 2026) - AstroBin I realized that 678C camera sits there in “to sell” pile. That camera is targeted for high-resolution planetary work. This still way beyond Dawes limit for this setup, but the shot is also seeing limi...

With a little better suited camera (much smaller sensor pixels), but without the moons: app.astrobin.com/i/wosomx

Jupiter with Galilean moons (January 2026) - AstroBin Tested shortly after SCT collimation with Tri-Bakhtinov mask. The camera is not great for planetary, but it already scratches against Dawes limit, and the shot is seeing limited and in fairly windy lo...

Finally collimated my second-hand EdgeHD 800 -- Tri-Bakhtinov masks are awesome, BTW -- and this unlocks high-resolution planetary work. First test shot after first collimation: app.astrobin.com/i/i28l14

M45 (Pleiades) - AstroBin Follow-up for the test shot (https://app.astrobin.com/u/shade?i=pok45a) from the same location.Moonless night, which was nice, but still quite a bit of light pollution in the city. I suspect 1 hour to...

M45 (Pleiades) from last night; I think this scratches against the 1 hour practical limit for total integration time spent outside in urban skies. app.astrobin.com/i/a6el2y

Light pollution is non-factor for M42, IMO. But yeah, you don't even need to have an extensive rig for it. If you have a regular camera with zoom lens, you can get away with 10s-ish exposures without much of the sky motion blurring. Stellarium can help to understand the framing with your optics:

Jupiter: Deep-Sky Imaging Rig Test Shot - AstroBin Spent 5 minutes on Jupiter between two long deep-sky exposures. The imaging setup is really not tailored for planetary work like this, so resolution is not great. It is still useful to see what can we...

Jupiter, Bayer matrix pixelated edition. Captured it opportunistically with an imaging setup that is not really great for planetary work. app.astrobin.com/i/k44h0h

M42 (Great Orion Nebula) - AstroBin First attempt at imaging Great Orion Nebula.M42 is such a bright and easy target you can see lots of details even with a stretch during the acquisition, and even with a single 30s sub! Stacking more s...

Great Orion Nebula is such an easy target to image, highly recommended for the beginners. You start having good results after just 30s of exposure already. And it is very forgiving in processing. app.astrobin.com/i/2gzqwy

Casual Friday night office. 640 W*h ought to be enough for anybody.

New arrival for updated conference calls background. (app.astrobin.com/i/152ckf, a bit remastered for printing)