MCL

Rubin Observatory with open dome under a night sky. Text reads "NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory has released its first world-public alerts. Here's what you need to know. El Observatorio Rubin de NSF-DOE publicó sus primeras alertas públicas a nivel mundial. Esto es lo que necesitas"

Rubin Observatory under a night sky. Text reads "What are alerts? ¿Qué son las alertas? Alerts are a "heads up" that something in the sky changed in brightness or position. Las alertas son "avisos" que indican que algo en el cielo cambió de brillo o de posición."

Rubin Observatory during an orange sunset. Text reads "Does an alert mean a new discovery? ¿Una alerta significa un nuevo descubrimiento? Not necessarily. An alert flags a change in the sky, which could be either a new discovery or a known object. No necesariamente. Una alerta señala un cambio en el cielo, que podría tratarse de un nuevo descubrimiento o de un objeto ya conocido."

Rubin Observatory under a night sky during a long exposure shot, causing the stars to streak. Text reads "Why are these first alerts such a big deal? ¿Por qué son tan importantes estas primeras alertas? Rubin is now a real-time discovery machine, enabling scientists worldwide to follow up within minutes! Rubin es ahora una máquina de descubrimientos en tiempo real, que permite a científicos de todo el mundo hacer seguimientos en cuestión de minutos."

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory has officially started releasing world-public alerts! 🎉

Here's what you need to know about these first alerts and what's coming up for Rubin ➡️

🔭🧪☄️

Illustrated graphic with the boot-shaped Rubin Observatory atop its site on Cerro Pachón beneath a sparkling night sky and the glowing band of the Milky Way stretching from lower left to upper right. Sprinkled throughout are many "Data alert!" popups, labeled with icons that represent supernovae, asteroids, hungry black holes, and more.

A 3-by-4 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled supernova, variable star, active galactic nucleus, and solar system object.

The largest spot-the-difference effort EVER has begun!🚨

On the night of Feb 24, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory officially released its first ~800,000 public alerts of detected changes in the night sky!🔍

A new era of discovery is here✨ 🔭🧪☄️

🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...

I’ve cropped the image and boosted the saturation, contrast, etc in iOS photos. Three Galilean moons become apparent. Callisto is not included because at 4x, it is out of the frame.

Sure. I centered Jupiter and went up to 4x. My exposure was around 2 ms and gain was around 50. You can adjust both until you get a hint of the bands in live view. Then, I go to movie mode and set it to RAW. I took a one min video and then stscked it.
You can edit the final image in the app.

Images were taken with a Seestar S50

Eyes of Clavius and Rupes Recta are revealed tonight along the terminator of the waxing gibbous (69%) moon.

Jupiter’s main bands also appear after stacking many frames taken at low exposure.

#astronomy #astrophotography #moon #jupiter

α Ursae Minoris

#polaris #astronomy #astrophotography #startrails

The #SuperbOwl Nebula! 🏈

#astronomy #astrophotography

Stacking of a movie taken with a Seestar S50 shows Regulus reappearing behind the moon at around 10:05 pm EST. Luckily, the S50 was able to capture it at low exposure and gain settings.

Zoom in of Regulus reappearing behind the moon.

Regulus (alpha Leonis, magnitude 1.4), the brightest star in Leo, subtly reappears after its lunar occultation on Feb. 2, 2026. Video stacked with #seestar S50.

#astronomy #astrophotography #occultation #moon

a close up high resolution image of the moon showing craters, mountains, and maria. Best 30% of 1474 frame 180s video taken with Orion ShortTube 80 telescope and ZWO ASI178MM camera, stacked with Autostakkert and processed with Registax and Photoshop.

I have had my Orion ShortTube 80 refractor for 30 years. I used it a lot in the 90s with a film camera. Now it is relegated to guide scope duty attached to a ZWO ASI178MM camera. Last night I let them show what they can do on the waxing gibbous moon. Not bad! Details in ALT. #astrophotography

Pardon me, it’s 700 million LY away.

Here’s the farthest galaxy, albeit faint, I’ve imaged on the Dwarf 3 - a member of Seyfert’s Sextet, almost 1 billion ly away.

bsky.app/profile/marc...

Wide angle shot of the Southern sky featuring 2 of the brightest stars, Canopus and Achernar, two dwarf galaxies (Large and Small Magellanic Clouds) and two star clusters.

Two stars, two galaxies, two clusters:

Canopus - 2nd brightest star (and the home star of Arrakis in Dune)
Achernar - 9th brightest star
Large and Small Magellanic Clouds - dwarf irregular galaxies
NGC 2516 - open cluster
47 Tucanae - globular cluster

#astronomy #astrophotography #arrakis #dune

Flaming Star Nebula

Pinwheel and Little Pinwheel Galaxies

Jupiter on 1/24/26

First light with the #DwarfMini scope

Flaming Star Nebula, M101 and NGC 3180 (Pinwheel and Little Pinwheel Galaxies) and Jupiter with the Galilean Moons

#astronomy #astrophotography #dwarflab #galaxies #jupiter #nebula

Orion on a cold winter evening.

#orion #astronomy #astrophotography #dwarf3

Fireworks Galaxy and NGC 6939 imaged with a Dwarf 3 scope

Happy New Year!!!
Here are the Fireworks Galaxy and NGC 6939.

#happynewyear #HNY #astronomy #astrophotography #NewYear2026

The Milky Way seen from the Southern Hemisphere. The Alpha Centauri system includes Proxima Centauri — the nearest star to our solar system, only 4.2 light-years away.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are visible to the naked eye under Bortle 2 skies.

Southern skies under Bortle 2 skies. Omega Centauri (green), Southern Cross (red), Alpha Centauri (yellow) in the Milky Way.The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are also visible with the naked eye.
#astronomy #astrophotography #southerncross #milkyway

The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) before and after a stellar merger producing the luminous red nova AT2025abao.

The luminous red #nova (LRN) AT2025abao in the Andromeda #galaxy was discovered by Koichi Itagaki on 10/17/25. Here is M31 on 6/25 vs 11/14 this year imaged with a #Dwarf3 telescope. The lower right inset shows the bright nova after the merger of two stars.

#astronomy #astrophotography

Aurora Borealis bathing Orion tonight

#aurora #astronomy #astrophotography

Stacked image taken with the S50 Seestar on Nov 2.

The brightest crater on the moon stands out during the waxing gibbous phase (~89%). The relatively young Aristarchus crater was formed 450 million years ago.

#moon #astronomy #astrophotography #seestar

Timelapse of Two Travelers —

Lemmon orbits with a majestic and dynamic tail spanning a few degrees.

SWAN silently sails with almost no tail yet proudly marks its presence with a green glowing nucleus, a signature of diatomic carbon.

#comet #astronomy #astrophotography #space

Taken with a Rokinon 10 mm f/2.8, 20 sec, 640 ISO

Capturing #cometLemmon and #cometSWAN together in a wide angle shot of the western sky around 90 mins after sunset.

#astronomy #astrophotography #comet

Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) passing by the Eagle Nebula (M16) on Oct. 17,2025. This is around 12 minutes of total integration time with 30 sec subs. Image taken with a Dwarf 3 scope.

While an Eagle soars, a glowing Swan swiftly glides across the night sky.

📷 details in alt text

#cometswan #astronomy #astrophotography #dwarf

Transit of the International Space Station on 10/4 at 1/3 actual speed.

#solartransit #astronomy #astrophotography #seestar

C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) imaged with a Dwarf 3 scope on Oct 2, 2025. The comet is in Leo Minor. The bright star to the upper left of the comet is 19 Leonis Minoris (19 LMi).

Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon near Leo Minor . The green color is from the dicarbon (C2) species found in the coma.

#astronomy #astrophotography #dwarf3 #comet #cometlemmon

A hydrogen alpha image (656 nm) of the Sun taken with a Lunt 40 mm telescope.

Coloring of the H-alpha image to bring out the solar prominences

An H-alpha image of the #Sun on Aug. 30.
Left: result from raw images aligned and stacked.
Right: color rendering of the left image in Photoshop to bring out the prominences.

On the disk are spicules or “fur”, filaments and plage (white regions near sunspots).

#astronomy #astrophotography

Neptune and Saturn imaged with the #Dwarf3 telescope on August 12. Two of Saturn’s larger moons,Titan and Iapetus, were discernible.
#astronomy #astrophotography

A collage of images showing the asteroid 2 Pallas over 3 nights. It is currently in the constellation Delphinus and will be in opposition and at its brightest on Aug 10. Pallas is the 3rd largest asteroid in the solars system after 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta.

2 Pallas, the 3rd largest asteroid in the solar system, is now in the constellation Delphinus. It will be in opposition and at its brightest on 8/10. Currently, it is at magnitude 9.4. The brightest star in each image is Saulocin.
#astronomy #astrophotography #dwarf3 #asteroid #minorplanet

Seyfert’s Sextet is a group of galaxies near Serpens. One of them is almost a billion light-years away! The image is taken with a dwarf 3 telescope. The total integration time is 15.5 mins, using 30 second sub-exposures.

Enlarged and cropped image of the sextet with NGC 6027d encircled. It is almost magnitude 16 and nearly 1 billion light-years away!

Seyfert’s Sextet, found between Hercules and Serpens, consists of 5 galaxies and a long tail of stars of one of them. NGC 6027d is not gravitationally related and is actually 955 million LY away! The other 5 are only 190 million LY away. Such old photons!

#dwarf3 #astronomy #astrophotography