iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

This part of New Mexico does not look at all like Kansas.

Photograph through window of the train. In the distance, a gray green mountain rises to a very sharp peak in the center of the frame.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Made it to WashingtonDC at 4pm, 6 hrs ride, about 30 mintes later than scheduled.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Made it to Petersburg. Next stop Richmond.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

If not already tried, "AI denoise" does wonders on graininess. You can apply it while #Seestar is still imaging, or if create a plan, can apply it after imaging is finished. After AI denoise, I like to tweak brightness up about 20% and contrast between 10-20%.

Galaxy M100, a face-on spiral is at the center of the image. A small edge-on spiral is below and to the left, while an airplane was traveling from the bottom left towards the center right. This is the raw image, before AI denoising, and tweaking the brightness and contrast

Spiral galaxy M100 is at the center. This is the processed version of the previous image, with AI denoise reducing the grain, and brightness and contrast tweaked to give a brighter galaxy and darker background.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

NGC 2903 in Leo is a 9th magnitude barred spiral with tightly wrapped arms. About 11 minutes (out of 20 wall-clock). Located near 𝜆 (lambda) Leonis (near the top of the sickle) it's worth zooming in a bit to see detail. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2903

At the center of a sparse star field with few bright stars, the barred spiral galaxy NGC 2903 is not quite face-on, and runs diagonally upwards fro left to right at about a 45 º angle. It appears fairly small in this image due to low magnification (about 40x). It has a small bright core with a central bar extending out both sides (though more pronounced on the lower left. From the bar the spiral arms are at first very tightly wound, then more loosely, with faint portions extending fairly far away from the central portion.

It is quite a nice galaxy, though overshadowed by the more famous "Leo Triplet" (M65/M66/3628) and the "Leo Double-Triple" (M105/M95/M96/3384/3389)

Imaged with an S50, then "AI denoised", with manual tweaking of the brightness and contrast.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

The #Seestar S50 🔭 did an amazing job on this object from my location near Wilmington NC. Imaged on 08 April 2026 as part of the Astronomical League's "Caldwell observing program".

At the center of a star-filled image, the Centarus A galaxy (also known as NGC 5128 or Caldwell 77) is a not-quite-round warm glow, with a prominent dark lane running diagonally across it from lower center-left to upper center-right. The lane has small brighter areas, small dots at the left, then a large irregular patch in the center of the lane. Zooming in on the image rewards you with intriguing details.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

C/2025 R3 is still visible, barely between rising & dawn. #Seestar S50 🔭w/plan: 4 images 10 mins, fromstarting 5:30. Third captured 5 of 10 minutes. Last 4 of 10, affected by moon and & increasing twilight. Tweaked contrast & brightness images to bring out any detail in tail.

C/2025 R3 in pre-dawn

The comet is still visible, in an increasingly narrow window between it rising and dawn.

I set the S50 out with a plan to take 4 images of 10 minutes each, starting at 5:30, when the comet would reach 15 degrees above the horizon. This is the third. It captured only about 5 out of the 10 minutes, affected by both the nearby moon and the increasing twilight.

I had to tweak the contrast and brightness to bring out any detail in the tail.

These images seem to show the tail in three parts: short broad spikes to either side of the longer "traditional" tail.

Pre-dawn image of comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS)

The comet is still visible, in an increasingly narrow window between it rising and dawn.

I set the S50 out with a plan to take 4 images of 10 minutes each, starting at 5:30, when the comet would reach 15 degrees above the horizon. The first two images failed. This is the last image only 4 minutes out of 10 wall-clock time. Even the 4 minutes was affected by both the nearby moon and the increasing twilight. I had to tweak the contrast and brightness to bring out any detail in the tail.

These images seem to show the tail in three parts: short broad spikes to either side of the longer "traditional" tail.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

For comparison, here’s the same galaxy taken with an S 50, about 90 minutes of 10 second exposures #seestar 🔭

Galaxy M101 in Ursa Major. It is a beautiful face on spiral galaxy. The outermost arm has a distinctive kink which makes it instantly recognizable.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS), imaged with a #Seestar S50 🔭 just before dawn. 9 minutes of 10s frames, AI denoised and contrast and brightness tweaked in the Seestar app. Currently brighter than 6th mag, so in theory visible unaided-eye. Probably have better luck with binoculars or 'scope, though.

The comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) glows against a backdrop of stars. The comet has a bright greenish-blue head, and a long tenuous tail extending out past the top of the frame. Seestars don't track comets very well, so there may be some blurring, but it's really quite a nice image for being so close to dawn.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Galaxy Centaurus A (aka NGC 1258, or C77), imaged with a #Seestar S50 🔭. 21 minutes of 10s frames internally stacked, then AI de-noised with brightness & contrast tweaked. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur... I like the strong dust lane with internal structure across the center.

At the center of a rich star field is a subtly colored galaxy, almost round, with a dark dust lane diagonally from the lower center left to the top center right. The dust lane shows internal structure of dark bands with a lighter overlay from right to about 1/2 way to the left. Zooming in shows the galaxy is somewhat irregularly shaped, not perfectly round. A chain of stars extends from the lower left diagonally up to just above the galaxy, and another arc of stars stretches from about the half way point of the chain horizontally to just below the galaxy.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Here's the center part of M44, imaged during the close #Mars pass last May. #Seestar S50 🔭 using framing to capture both the cluster and the planet.

The core of M44 (the Beehive cluster) stretches diagonally upward from the lower left corner. About a dozen brighter stars appear amongst many ore dimmer ones. In the top right corner the planet Mars is an orange(ish) over-exposed glow.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Open star cluster M50 in Monoceros (the unicorn). 6 minutes of 10s exposures with an #Seestar #S50 🔭 Fairly easy to find (located about 1/4 of the way from Sirius to Procyon), this cluster looks quite nice in just about any telescope, as well as my 10x50 #binoculars.

An astro-image of open cluster M50 in Monoceros. Two or three brightish stars, a dozen or so less so, and another 2-3 dozen fainter ones stand out agains a rich winter Milky Way background. The cluster is centered, covers nearly half the frame left to right, and about 1/5 of the frame top to bottom. It is elongated left to right. It looks a bit like a bug with an elongated proboscis pointing down, sweeping arcs of stars to the left and right for legs, with a bulbous abdomen at the top of the cluster.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I think the S50 🔭's greater magnification and aperture do help. Here's 6 minutes on M104 from my back yard (LM 5). #Seestar #M104 #Galaxy

Against a star filled dark background, M104 (the Sombrero galaxy) is almost perfectly edge-on. It is showing off its dark lane, with the galactic core bulge visible above and below the disk.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

TIL that that small bright bar below and to the right of Mare Nectaris is part of Rupes Altai, located near the center of the larger feature, and highlighted by the angle of the illumination. Zoomed in in this image from a couple days later. #Seestar S50🔭 #moon

An image of the northern half of a waxing crescent moon. Mare Nectar's is the grey area, with several craters curling around it. a short distance away is a short bright bar, which is part of the much longer Rupes Altai, part of the outer edge of the mare.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Here's the completed image (without marks).

Across the dark background of space are scattered points of light. The three brightest in the top third are stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Nearly a dozen are distant galaxies, part of the Coma Berenices galaxy cluster. Some of these have fuzzy halos of light around them. Others are so small or far away they appear star like.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Attached is a screen-shot of the S50 app imaging galaxy NGC 4889. According to the AL Caldwell observing list it's: "...brightest of the Coma cluster". I turned on the "mark" function, which labels all the DSOs in the field. FOV of S50 is about .8 x 1.3 degrees That's a lotta little galaxies...

An image of the "stargazing" screen of the S50 cell phone app. The black background of the sky is sprinkled stars, some three are brighter but most are very faint. Almost indistinguishable from the stars are many many tiny galaxies. The "mark" feature of the app has been turned on, and each deep-sky object has been circled and labeled. About two dozen galaxies are identified, most or all members of the Coma cluster of galaxies.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Weird snow. Some places the grass pokes through. Other places the drifts pile high. Out the window along our roof.

In a photo taken through a window, giving a grey cross-hatch effect, visible past the window latch and (fake) window leading, a several-foot high (just under a meter for those using sensible measuring systems) drift of snow rises on the roof, next to but not touching, the white vinyl siding of the house. An adjacent part of the roof has been swept clear of snow by the wind, which apparently deposited it on the drift.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Every year, a bunch of #vultures come to our barn, morning and evening. They don't actually live here, we think they just come here to warm up in the morning and evening sun. When I go to feed the horses, a dozen or two of the #birds will fly off the barn and perch in the trees along the pasture.

Outlined against a clear blue winter sky, hree turkey vultures perch in the bare trees above our Quonset Hunt barn. I'm hiding while I take the picture so I don't spook them away. Out of sight behind the barn to the right are many more vultures in other trees.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Weather change coming: 23º halo around the moon, with Jupiter just inside at the top.

Nearly-full moon at center, in a glory, inside a 23 degree halo. Jupiter is inside the halo at top. A blue internal reflection is below and to the left of the moon, and is an artifact of the inexpensive cell-phone camera.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

NGC 55 / C72: The "String of Pearls" galaxy. #Seestar S50🔭 16 min vs 20 min wall-clock. "Denoised" & adjusted brightness & contrast to bring out arms. Not included in the H400, so surprised me to see such a large bright galaxy. I like the differing densities and lengths of the left vs. right arm.

in a dark field with small faint stars scattered, a galaxy spans the frame from left to right. The galaxy is nearly edge-on, and rotated with respect to the frame in the 8 o'clock to 2 o'clock direction. The bright core is small, and surrounded by an oval of spiral arms, then much dimmer arms extend left and right. The right arm is much shorter and thinner than the left. Both arms show variations in size and density, with the left arm shining and fading, the recovering and extending nearly as far as the rest of the galaxy.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

NGC NGC 2261 (Hubble's Variable Nebula, C46), imaged with a #Seestar S50 🔭. Pictures before & after using the S50's AI denoising and brightness / contrast settings. Imaged for Astronomical League's "Caldwell" observing program (www.astroleague.org/caldwell-obs...). 15 min @ 10 sec in alt-az mode.

in the middle of a star-strewn astro image, a comet-like nebula grows from a narrow apex (pointing down and right) to a wider fan, then fades to a pale remnant. A long pale spike extends from the left-most corner of the fan to about the same length as the main body of the nebula. This is the un-modified image as originally captured.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Barnard 139 is the elongated dark patch near the center of the image. It looks a bit like a squid swimming down & left, with tentacles stretching up & right. The star field is quite dense: this is in the middle of the summer Milky Way.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Dark Nebula B 335, taken in a 20 minute exposure (of which 15 minutes of 20-second frames were stacked) with a #Seestar S50 🔭. The original image was quite blue. I used the apps "AI Denoise", then tweaked the brightness and contrast to make the nebula stand out more.

An image of a dense starfield, with hundreds of faint stars with a few brighter ones, contains a small dark blot. This is dark nebula Barnard 335, a cloud of gas and dust blocking the light of the background stars.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Green tree #frogs having a convention tonight.

In a scene lit by a night-sky friendly light, three green treefrogs are waiting for bugs. Two are on a screen door panel off its track and leaning against the house. The third is on the wall.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Usagi is a charter member of the Dead Worm Appreciation Society. #dog #GreatPyrenees

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Amazingly good image taken during the full moon. NGC 188 (also C1) was about as far from the moon as was possible, and i did tweak the contrast a bit to highlight the cluster stars, but still: this was taken during Full Moon!

NGC 188 (also called Caldwell 1) is at the center of the frame. About 100 dim stars are sprinkled over the field, covering about 1/2 of the frame from side to side, and about 1/3 from top to bottom,

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

#proofOfCat This is Meep, our 16 year old cat, grumpy from being woken from a nap. Her name is the only thing she could say when we rescued her from a dog, 16 years ago.

A white cat with black patches on her head, body, and tail lies curled up on a multicolored striped towel.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

First clear night in a week or so. In-between objects on the Dark Nebula and Caldwell observing programs, so i hit a couple of "Tonight's Best" with the #seestar S50 🔭. NGC 253 is a lovely galaxy- hard to belive i never observed it 'til a year ago. NGC 6960 is a segment of the Veil nebula.

against a dark field of dark space, with a few stars scattered across it, the Sculptor galaxy (NGC 253, also known as Caldwell 64) stretches diagonally across the field from upper middle left to lower middle right. The galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on, but a lot of internal structure is visible, especially dark blots where gas and dust blot out the stars in the galaxy's arms.

NGC 6960 is a portion of the Veil nebula, an enormous planetary nebula remnant, The whole nebula is essentially a ring, but it has broken into segments as it expanded. Many portions of the ring have their own NGC numbers. This chunk is sometimes called the "Witch's Broom". In this image, i crowded it over to the right side of the image to try and catch the many small dim blobs and whorls to the left and below the main "broom". The broom itself is rather bendy, and splits at into a fork the bottom end. There are many colors, mainly red and green, spread both on the body of the broom and in the "froth" below and behind the broom.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

This was about two feet (.7 m) above the ground, attached to several stalks of golden rod. Anybody have speculation about what kind of #bird made this #birdnest?

In a field of yellow blooming goldenrod a birds nest is woven around several stalks. The nest is a lovely cup shaped construct.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

A rather blurry picture of a spider whose GREEEEN fangs were gleaming in the sun. #spider

On a gnarled fence post a black and white jumping spider is tucked into a recess. Its extremely green fangs were gleaming in the sun. In fact, the intense green color was what made me notice the spider on the post.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Doh! For some reason i read M44 as M41. Apologies. Here's an actual image of M44, with Bonus Mars and Satellite. 20ish minutes with #Seestar S50 🔭

M44, the Beehive cluster, spreads across the field of view as strings of widely separated but bright stars, with lots of fainter stars in the background. At top right, the planet Mars glows (overexposed), and a satellite photobombs from the upper center down to the left.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Like many "close" open clusters, it can benefit from a wider field of view. Here's the same cluster at a lower power, allowing some more of the clusters stars in the image. M41 lives in Canis Major, & gives some idea of what M42 (the Orion nebula) will look like when it grows up. #seestar S50 🔭

Open cluter M41 in Canis Major appears as a set of stars concentrated towards the center of the image, but stretching nearly side-to-side, and occupying about a 1/3 of the image field of view.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Dark nebula Barnard 92, taken with a #seestar S50 🔭 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard...

Barnard 92 is a cloud of gas and dust blocking the light of the stars in the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud. Because of the star cloud, the background of the image is very, very full of faint stars, with a few brigher ones scattered about. The dark nebula is somewhat oval, oriented up and down at the center of the image, with a flattened area at the bottom and less dark extentions reaching the right edge of the image.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Handrail #frog. These are slimy when you find them in the dark going up the stairs. “#Blenophobia” fear of slimy textures.

A small green tree front is sitting on a handrail. It is in perfect position to accidentally run your hand over it.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

We have horse, er, cattle egrets in our pasture. The horses (who play nose hockey with the turtles who wander in there) don't seem to care about the egrets.

at the edge of a field of grass with white farm buildings in the background, a dark horse is grazing head downward. Several white cattle egrets are hunting bugs stirred up by the horse's movements.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

M 11, the Wild Ducks, taken while i waited for it to get dark enough to try a Huge Mosaic of the Pipe nebula (which failed). Under some conditions, visually in a modest sized telescope, M 11 looks like a V of waterfowl (which is where the "Wild Ducks" came from).

An astroimage of M 11, the Wild Ducks. M11 is an open cluster, which means in contains a fairly low number of stars (under 1000), as compared to globular clusters, which can contain hundreds of thousands of stars. This frame contains many background stars because the cluster is in a rich arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The cluster ins at the center of the image, and is quite rich and moderately concentrated. There is an outer halo of stars, more or less round. inside the halo the stars grow more concentrated, and appear to have straight lines on three sides, amost a parallelagram. The innermost part of the cluster shows a pattern almost like a tiny cat, standing facing left, but looking out at you looking at it.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

#TCrB still hadn't become a nova as of last night...

At the center of the image, a small dim star still hasn't gone nova.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Mi trovis verdan araneon. I found a green spider.

Jen verda araneo, kun longaj krurojn kaj pinta korpo,

Here's a green spider, with long legs and a pointy body.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Sometimes the objects are basically invisible, particularly at the low magnification given by the #Seestar.

At the center of the image, globular cluster 6760 is barely visible, as basically an eraser smudge.

Open cluster NGC 6709 is a large, triangle-shaped group of stars at the center of the image. About 2-dozen stars are fairly easy to attribute to the cluster. This cluster would almost certainly be worth visiting with an 8" or larger scope.

At the center of the image, planetary nebula 6772 is pretty much invisible. If it wasn't with a circle and its name, you probably wouldn't notice it. The low magnification of the S50 means it doesn't make the object big enough to see.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

I like to take very short exposures of objects with the #Seestar S50 🔭, to approximate what you can see through a modest (8-10 inch) scope. Well, those are modest sizes nowadays, given the prevalence of foot-wide and larger scopes. 30 seconds on most objects is about right.

At the center of the image is a very small globular cluster, looking mostly like an eraser smudge

At the center of the image is the open cluster M11, one of the best and brightest in the northern hemisphere sky. It is one of the few objects which look as good in telescopes as it does in (short exposure) images.

At the center of the image is open cluster 6704, which is barely detectable against the background stars.

Open cluster 6664 occupies most of the center of the image, containing about 30 obvious stars distributed in a squashed semi-circle. The brightish star at extreme right is a foreground star not associated with the cluster.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Region around 𝛾 Cygni (Sadr). A difuse nebula around the star, with many dark nebulae superimposed. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_C... 30 minutes with #Seestar S50 🔭

A bright, overexposed star is at the center of the image. Immediately to the right of the star is a tiny red nebula, about 1/3 the size of the the star, Surrounding the star throughout the image are redish clouds of gas, with dark nebulae superimposed, blocking the light of the clouds. In addition to the random background stars scattered, there is a small open cluster at the bottom left of the image.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Despite a waxing moon, M26 (The Dumbell Nebula) looks quite good. 30 minutes with a #Seestar S50 🔭 Spite de kreskante luno, M26 aperas bele. Tridek Minutoj.

M27, the Dumbell Nebula, close multicolored against a starry background. In this image space isn't dark, because the waxing moon is giving a reddish-brown hue. The nebula itself looks a bit like an apple core turned sideways in the image. There are two rims of redish at eiter side. Whitish green stretches a between the rims, narrowing towards where they meet. Green puffs spill out the top and bottom.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Because Lyra is fairly far from the first quarter moon, here's 20 minutes on the Ring Nebula with a #Seestar S50. Bubble of gas, glowing in the light of a white dwarf at the center.

against a dark background, stars are sprinkled, At the center is a colored donut, or perhaps a bagel: the Ring nebula. It is the outer layers of a star, blown off at the end of its life to form a bubble of gas. At the center, too small to be seen at this scale, is a white dwarf. Energy from this star makes the gasses glow.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Hieraŭ cxielarkon mi vidis... Ĉi-vespere mi vidis maldikan kurban lunon

Ĉielarko kurbas super kamparo.

A rainbow curves above a farm.

Maldika kurba luno en malheliĝa ĉielo, super tri arboj kaj blanka domo,

A thin curved moon in a darkening sky, above three trees and a white house

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

The assembled flock on the pasture beyond the pond.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Bunch of Canada honkers dropped themselves in our pasture. Must have been about forty of them.

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