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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Some first-light fun with my new Touptek AE676C and its included fisheye lens and IR (>850nm) pass filter: the Milky Way passing overhead, before it's completely eliminated by the full Moon rising over the trees. #astrophotography

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

This M13 + NGC 6207 #astrophoto was supposed to be just a test shot for an adaptive deconvolution tool I’ve been vibe-coding. The Moon was up so I didn’t expect too much. Came out pretty neat though, I find.

An astrophoto of globular cluster M13 in the lower left, and tiny galaxy NGC 6207 on the top right. Colourful stars of different sizes are sprinkled across the image.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Thank you. Also here in Kenya, light pollution forever spreading. On my way home from the dark site, whihc is Olorgesailie Prehistoric site, I stopped over at a place just off Ngong Hills. There's a new Kenya Power substation down in the Rift Valley floor, and it's ridiculously lit up at night.

Kimuka substation at dusk as seen from the top of the Rift Valley Escarpment near Ngong Hills, Kenya, 1km away. The land is already quite dark, but the substation is clearly visible because of its over-the-top lights, creating a fully white "blown out" stripe and lens reflections in the photo.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I went to my closest dark site last night mainly for visual observation, but put my old Olympus Pen E-PL5 with Lumix 20mm lens on a simple TS EQ2.5 tracking mount to shoot this #astrophoto of the central Milky Way in the meantime. More info in alt text.

The central Milky Way from Scorpius on the lower left through Sagittarius in the centre to Serpens on the top right. The dark horse nebula is just right of the centre, “upside down”.

About 2.5 hours of 10-second exposures. Stacked and processed in Siril, Graxpert, Gimp.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Was soll hier suggeriert werden @spiegel.de? Dass "pro-israelisch" = "pro-Netanyahu ist"? Oder vielleicht dass es schlecht ist, "pro-israelisch" zu sein? Aus www.spiegel.de/ausland/dona...

Screenshot aus einem Artikel von spiegel.de, mit Text: "Zwei von Trumps massivsten Geldgebern haben den Wahlkampf gegen Massie gesponsert. Miriam Adelson, die Witwe von Sheldon Adelson, einem Glücksspielmilliardär, dem Benjamin Netanyahu zu großen Teilen seine jahrzehntelange Karriere als israelischer Premier verdankt. Und Paul Singer, ein Hedge-Funds-Manager, auch aus der proisraelischen Ecke, den ein Magazin einmal als »Untergangsinvestor« bezeichnete."

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Finally got around to watch Project Hail Mary. Nice combo of hard sci-fi and humour. Amaze amaze amaze 😃 Even if it turned out that neither Rocky’s nor Spock's planet probably exist, 40 Eridani is a cool system: a Sun-like star, a white and a red dwarf. I took an #astrophoto of them last year.

3 Stars, 1 apparently larger bright white star to the top-left of the center, and 2 smaller and dimmer close to each other to the lower right of the center. One of the smaller ones is red, the other white.
All 3 are a bit blurry due to magnification of the original image.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Last night, I shot a 60fps 1-minute phone video through my 10“ f/5 Dob with a 13mm Nagler and Paracorr. Here’s a short snippet of it. One can see Io and Europa „leading“ it, blinking in and out. It was a bit windy at times but seeing was ok. I hope to process it today. #astrophotography

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

The Moon tonight. Phone through telescope (10“ Dob, 30mm UFF eye piece, Paracorr). 48 x 0.001s with the AstroShader app. Edited in AstroShader and final touches in iOS Photos. #astrophoto

The first quarter Moon with many craters and mountains visible along the terminator which goes from top to bottom.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

This was shot with an old Logitech C270, with the lens removed and the cam stuck into a 1.25” T-piece of pipe, which fits into the focuser after some filing. However this was more an exercise in repurposing equipment that I already had. Modern much better planetary cams start at $150…

A somewhat blurry image of Jupiter. However the cloud bands and Great Red Spot are clearly visible, and some festoons are hinted at.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

After more than a week of additional shooting this #astrophoto, I got ~21 hours total after culling (clouds, shake due to wind, autofocus issues…). Much better, but shows the limits of my old Oly E-M5 II; I strapped a Peltier cooler to it but it's no match for modern cooled astrocams noise-wise.

Casper the Friendly Ghost (M78) at the top right looking at a bottom-up "S"-shaped a section of Barnard’s Loop (Sh 2-276). It is the same image as in the quoted post, but less noisy and less blotchy, and with better colours and contrast. It's also cropped a bit more because stacking artefacts around the margins were wider, since I had some inconsistent position angles during the different nights of shooting.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

When M78 sank too low in the sky, I had the scope switch to M44, the Beehive cluster. This is about 2 hours of 10-second exposures after culling. I used a short exposure time because the cluster supposedly has a mix of red and white-blue stars. However I can’t see any blue in my image. #astrophoto

An image of the Beehive cluster M44, a cluster of bright/big white and orange stars in front of many mall fainter/smaller stars.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

But when you look at observation sketches instead, the ghost figure becomes quite apparent. See e.g. posts in www.cloudynights.com/search/?q=M7... When I stretch my image minimally to just bring out the central nebulosity of M78, I get a somewhat similar impression. What do you all think about this?

A crop of just the central, brightest region of M78 surrounded by blackened background. The visible region has a vaguely ghost-like shape, with 2 bright stars next to each other being the "eyes". There are 2 other relatively bright stars in the picture, one on the back part of the "ghost", but I think this doesn't take away from the ghost impression.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Casper the Friendly Ghost (M78) looking at a section of Barnard’s Loop (Sh 2-276). After about a week of shooting, having collected some 12 hours of integration time (of which I discarded 7 hours because of clouds, focus issues etc.) this is still very much WIP as it needs more time. #astrophoto

An astrophoto with many stars, an inverted "S"-shape of dim, dark red (emission) nebulosity on the left, and 2 bright white-ish patches of (reflection) nebulae on the top-right. The right one looks a bit like a ghost with a pointy head and 2 bright eyes looking to the left.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

There were 1.5 hours tonight after dusk and before the Moon rose. No major clouds but unfortunately haze or high clouds. I looked at Messier 34, the Spiral Cluster, a pretty little open cluster about 1500 light years away. I also took an #astrophoto of it with my phone, see alt text for details.

The stars of M34 against black night sky background. Some, particularly those forming the spiral shape, are bright white-blue; while others are dimmer and red-ish.
Shot and edited with the AstroShader and Photos apps on an iPhone 14, using the main camera. 207 0.209-second exposures at ISO 1639. Cropped to the cluster, as stars at the outer edges are less sharp.
Some star shapes are a bit smeared out, possibly because it was quite windy and the scope shook quite a bit.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

OTOH, when I view the bot's answer post, it shows that it's an answer to another post, but I can't see that post (my request post). Might this be an issue with the bot, or with @bsky.app ? @support.bsky.team

Screenshot of an answer post by Astrometry Bot, which shows that it's an answer to another post, but that post can't be seen.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

@quantumkat.bsky.social Hi, thanks for the awesome Astrometry Bot! One issue, the link between my request post (bsky.app/profile/data...) and the bot's answer (bsky.app/profile/kat-...) seems to be broken. I.e. when I view my request post, it shows that it has 1 reply, but I can't see the answer:

Screenshot of my post requesting the Astrometry Bot for a plate solve. It shows that it has 1 reply, but is not showing the reply.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Friday early morning shot of the Southern night sky, and an evening shot with the almost full Moon, from rural Cherangani in Western Kenya. See image alt texts for details. #astrophotos

A photo of the Southern night sky over a barely lit foreground of trees, a simple 1-story house and a station wagon car with open boot. In front of the car is a Dobsonian telescope on the ground.
The sky shows the constellations of Centaurus, Crux, Carina and Vela. Carina nebula and star clusters are visible, as is Omega Centauri. The Milky Way background with dark nebulae such as the Coalsack are faintly visible.
The image was taken with an Olympus Pen E-PL5 and a Panasonic Lumix G 14mm lens on a tripod, at f/2.5, without tracking of the sky. 85 2-second images, stacked both unaligned, to bring out the foreground, and another time aligned on the stars. Then I separated and processed foreground and sky separately and combined them later in Gimp.
I’m not very proficient at this process, so if zooming in to the boundary of the foreground (trees) and sky, one can find some artefacts from that.

The almost full Moon over a distant hill in the evening light just before sunset. The hill is loosely covered in trees. The sky is mostly blue, with a few clouds visible on the right edge of the image. The Moon shows some structure with brighter and darker parts.
Some scrubs with small yellow blossoms (slightly blurry) and behind them some trees in the foreground.
This was a single shot with my Olympus E-PL5 and a Voigtländer 35mm Color Skopar at f/11 and 1/1250s.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Oh and Moin, as we say in northern Germany, and happy 2. Christmas day from sunny and sommerly #Kenya 🌞

Glass expresso cup with an engraved elephant, filled with expresso, in the sun on the wooden table on my patio. Both cup and coffee are locally made here in Kenya.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Got around to processing a shot from earlier this year: Antares and surrounding nebulosity, with globular clusters M4 and NGC 6144. #astrophotography

Big and bright Antares and surrounding yellow-ish nebulosity on the left, small and comparatively faint NGC 6144 center-top, M4 on the lower right.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

By personal consternation, the Enterprise D definitely. But more objectively:

2 imperial star destroyers crashing, then crashing together into the orbital gate protecting Scarif in Rogue One.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

40 Eridani, the system of Mr. Spock’s home planet Vulcan 🖖 A triple system of a star slightly smaller than the Sun, a white and a red dwarf. 80 x 0.019s sub-exposures with the AstroShader app on 10“ Dob at 100x. AS couldn’t align, so raws processed using Siril, GraXpert and Gimp. #astrophotography

A picture if a big bright white star (40 Eridani A) in the top left, and two smaller and dimmer stars near each other in the bottom right. One of them is white and slightly bigger and brighter (B, a white dwarf), the other red (C, a red dwarf).

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

First light with my new (but used) 10” Dob yesterday, in full daylight. Taken with phone and the Astroshader app on Sky Rover 30mm UFF. #🌒 #astrophotography #astronomy

The waxing not-yet quarter Moon on blue sky background.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Another one of my favourites that I've taken with my phone using the AstroShader app: Carina Nebula, taken on 11 Mar 2024. The bright star near the centre is η Carinae, an unusual star which had a "great eruption" in the mid 1800s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Car... #Astronomy #Astrophotography

Phone image of Carina Nebula.

500 x 1.0s sub-exposures at iso 1644, through a 32mm Plossl in SkyWatcher Heritage 150p telescope, on a non-tracking mount.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Circle of galaxies including Messier 87-91. I've started processing using the new CFA Drizzle in Siril 1.4 Beta. It doesn't seem to play well with the CCM I've so far used to get "human-natural" colours, so this only used photometric colour correction. #astronomy #astrophotography

Circle of galaxies including Messier 87-91. The galaxies appear yellow-ish and quite small, having been taken in a 420mm FL scope with m4/3 sensor.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Same subject, very different look. This was taken afocally with my phone through my telescope.

Messier 24 Small Sagittarius Star Cloud. Lots of stars on a mostly black background, the dust of the area isn’t really visible above the noise.
Stars are also not sharp towards the edges, maybe because of the weight of the eye piece, phone adapter + phone tilting the plastic focuser on the SkyWatcher Heritage 150p.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

By the way here's my own attempt at Messier 7 (Ptolemy's Cluster), with a hint of NGC 6453 on the right. Pretty noisy though because I don't have a proper astrocam, so I had to level-out more of the background than I would have liked. And so far I got only 375 usable seconds due to clouds.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

I have a still where I had edited out the power lines, but it was a hasty job and I should revisit it/redo it better...

Still image of comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS over some trees just before dawn ca. 15th October 2024.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Great, thanks. I had also catched it rising one morning from my house. Unfortunately there were some power lines.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

We celebrated the International Dark Sky Week with the Kenya Space Weekend. Even though it's the "long rains" season and generally cloudy, we were very lucky and got clear skies. Next year, we will probably move our Dark Sky Week to a time of year that makes more sense around here. #DarkSky #Kenya

$4 telescopes in front of the Great Rift Valley side of Ngong Hills, Kajiado, Kenya, in the late evening light and ready to look at the night sky. The sky is blue with some clouds. The telescopes are 1 8" Dobsonian reflector made in Turkana, Kenya, 2 6" Newtonian reflectors on German equatorial mounts (1 motorised), and a small "short tube" refractor on a table-top Dobsonian mount --$

The same telescopes as in the first picture plus a pair of 10x50 binoculars on a tripod in front of the Milky Way at night. The view is facing due South, with the constellations of Carina and the Southern Cross near their highest points in the middle of the picture. Clusters in Carina and Carina Nebula are visible, as is the Coal Sack Nebula just to the lower left of the Southern Cross.
Underneath the sky some acacia trees. A light from the campground's kitchen can be seen on the right, disturbing the otherwise pretty dark scene, which was darker in reality than it looks on the photo.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Smiley face Moon ⭐️🌙🪐 🙂 as pictured by Joseph Wamuti from the Space Society of Kenya. His original phone pic plus my edit. At my place it’s cloudy 😕 #Moon #Venus #Saturn #astrophotography

Phone picture of the crescent Moon, its sides „pointing“ to the top right, and slight earthshine, with bright Venus to its top left and dim Saturn to its right.

A crop of the first pic, rotated so that it’s more in smiley face orientation, and increased contrast bringing out Saturn and earthshine more.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Well with some imagination, a very wide-eyed one for a few minutes before the sky gets too bright from my location near the equator. From more southerly locations it will get smilier 🙂

Stellarium screenshot showing the crescent Moon plus Venus and Saturn at 25th April 5:53am from Kenya. The FoV of 10x50 binoculars is also depicted.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Someone in a Kenyan economics WhatsApp group asking, "How can someone, supposedly supporting development and humanitarian aid be driving a $130k car? Is there some naïve POV I'm coming at this from? Can someone enlighten?" Fair question...

A screenshot of a WhatsApp post showing the picture of the back of a Range Rover luxury SUV with Kenyan diplomatic UN numberplate, and the question as quoted in this post.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Tja. Dafür hätte man wohl @robert-habeck.de wählen müssen und nicht (Sch)Merz.

Zitat aus Spiegel-Interview mi Wirtschaftsweiser Malmendier:

(…)Aber die neue US-Administration eröffnet Europa auch neuen ökonomischen Spielraum.

SPIEGEL: Wo sehen Sie den?

Malmendier: Denken Sie nur an neue grüne Technologien. Unter Joe Biden haben die USA mit dem Inflation Reduction Act zig Milliarden in den Aufbau dieses Marktes investiert. Trump will davon nichts mehr wissen. Dabei boomen Wind- und Solarkraft, CO₂-speicher, Wasserstoffturbinen und Wärmepumpen weltweit. Europäische Konzerne und Start-ups könnten diese Lücke füllen. Die neue Bundesregierung darf jetzt nur nicht den Fehler machen und alte Industriearbeitsplätze schützen. Sie muss die Technologien von morgen klug fördern.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

This is my own Skywatcher Heritage 150p travel dob on a motorised Vixen GPD2 GEQ mount using wooden tube rings made by a local „fundi“ (=craftsman), at a recent Uni Nairobi AstroNight. It’s in the centre of town with bad light pollution, but I often take it out of town to dark skies.

Several people, mostly students (they all gave consent), on the rooftop of the Uni Nairobi physics building around my telescope.

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Bastian Blankenburg @databu.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

This is a self-made telescope by Mr Francis in Lodwar/Turkana/Kenya, who has sent it to me in Nairobi for testing it. I‘ve only got a few minutes of observation with it so far because it’s rainy season here. It wasn’t enough yet to improve collimation. But I did see cloud bands on Jupiter.

A white metal 8“ ca. f/7.5 Dobsonian telescope with sticker-pictures of Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon, and text „Aliens are coming“.

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