#dwarflab — Public Fediverse posts

Over three nights last week, I shot #M17 over for a total of just over 8 hours.

This #Nebula is known as the #SwanNebula aka the #OmegaNebula aka #LobsterNebula aka #CheckmarkNebula aaaand #NGC6618, which is far, far too many names. Please do me a favour, and don't add to them.

For some reason, my telescope has decided that it is also #IC4701 aka #SH2-44 , but that is actually the fainter, sparser nebula in the top left.

In any event, this rich star forming region also contains several open clusters - #NGC6618 is embedded in M17, but #NGC6596 is in the foreground of SH2-44, and is not part of the star forming region.

Many of the stars are very hot fast burning stars, and they brightly illuminate the clouds of gas and dust.

Shot on a #Dwarf3 with the inbuilt Ha/OIII filter. Postprocessing in #Dwarflab Stellar Studio and #Snapseed .

#Astronomy #Astrophotography #Astrodon #BackYardAstronomy #SouthernSky

Here is a #SouthernSky classic - #C70 - The #SouthernPinwheel or #NGC300 .

This was shot over the course of four nights in the last week, with the last night being shot in OIII/SII , because I had that set up from shooting the #TriffidNebula earlier in the night.

This extra session has added some interesting highlights. In particular in the lower left tip of one of the arms, there is what appears to be a large nebula (but is more likely a group of them).

Postprocessed in #Dwarflab StellarStudio and #Snapseed.

#Astronomy #Astrophotography #Astrodon #SmartTelescope #BackYardAstronomy

$399 Dwarf Mini Is ‘the World’s Smallest Smart Telescope’ https://petapixel.com/2026/04/28/399-dwarf-mini-is-the-worlds-smallest-smart-telescope/ #artificalintelligence #astrophotography #Equipment #deepspace #dwarfmini #telescope #dwarflab #News #ai

Just a 10 minute look at the Carina Nebula with the Dwarf 3 and some #Snapseed editing.

#SmartTelescope #Astrodon #Astrophotography #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #Astronomy #BackyardAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #Dwarf3 #DwarfLab

First time I have tried time lapse with the -Dwarf 3- oops strike that, I did it with the Dwarf2! #LunarEclipse #astronomy #astrophotography #Astrodon #SouthernhemisphereAstronomy #drivewayAstrophotograpy #backyardAstronomy #Smarttelescope #Dwarf2 #Dwarflab

It is the end of #Kambarang and the start of #Birak here in #Noongar Country. With that the Emu is setting early in the evening. As compensation, we are now getting the #EtaCarinaNebula instead.

So last night I did a mosaic shot of with with my #Dwarf3 #SmartTelescope from my back yard.

Only a couple of hours effective exposure, but I am really happy with the results.

2hrs 13 minutes, 60s@60, Ha/OIII filter.

Postprocessed in the #DwarfLab Stellar Studio and #snapseed.

#astronomy #astrophotography #astrodon #southernHemisphere #southernskies #backyardAstronomy

This morning, as I emerge from a week of HMPV (a respiratory illness), I have an unusual (for me) treat.

Last night, while I slept, I had my #Dwarf3 up on the patio roof just outside the door to the games room I am isolating in. The games room is elevated, so the patio roof is at eye level. This makes it perfect for putting the telescope on, and then crawling into bed. The downside is that the field of view is quite limited, as the games room roof overhangs the patio roof by a goodly amount.

But the view to the North and East is not bad. And it turns out that, while Andromeda is blocked by the houses next door, #M33 is not.

Now here in Perth, it does not get very far above the horizon at the best of times, but last night I managed to snag an hour and a half of it.

(Edited to include what I've been sick with.)

So here we are: The #TriangulumGalaxy , Dwarf3 #SmartTelescope . Postprocessed in the #DwarfLab #StellarStudio, #Snapseed, and #GooglePhotos

#Astronomy #Astrodon #astrophotography

We're getting toward the end of National Science Week in Australia, so I polished this up for you with the help of @rdm 's handy spiff-up-your-photo guide.

It was a result of multiple sessions and stacking in my #DwarfLab #SmartTelescope #Dwarf3

This is The String of Pearls Galaxy or NGC 55.

#Astrodon #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #Galaxy #Astronomy #BackyardAstrophotography #DrivewayAstronomy

We're getting toward the end of National Science Week in Australia, so I polished this up for you.

It was a result of multiple sessions and stacking in my #DwarfLab #SmartTelescope #Dwarf3

It's a nice subject and one I think I'll revist.

#Astrodon #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #Nebula #Astronomy #BackyardAstrophotography #DrivewayAstronomy

I've written a bit more of a long-form post about my #astrophotography post-processing procedures.
https://rdmasters.lympago.com/2025/08/adventures-in-astrophotography-post.html

#Astronomy #Astrodon #SmartTelescope #Dwarf3 #DwarfII #DwarfLab #Snapseed

Over the last three nights - a break in the weather for us here in #Boorloo ( #PerthWA ) - I've been targeting the same target after midnight and through to astronomical twilight. It is another target that is familiar to me - #C63 or #HelixNebula sometimes known as the Eye of Sauron Nebula or the Eye of God Nebula.

This is the largest planetary nebula visible to us, only about 200 parsecs away, and is about 2.8 light years across, making it about 22 arcminutes across for the main body, and is about 6500 years old.

So back to the making of this image. Each night I got about five hours of shooting in with my #Dwarf3 , for about fifteen hours total. I had to ditch a bunch of frames as they had dodgy data (atmospheric distortions, musktrails, and, in one case, a passing jet), which brought me down to thirteen hours and thirty-six minutes (816x60s@80). These I restacked using the "Megastack" function of the #DwarfLab app (about 3 hours - executed entirely within the telescope), and then passed the result to the #StellarStudio part of the app (running in the cloud) to optimize the FITS file and run a star removal.

I then exported a PNG of each version, and started post-processing. This consisted of passing the starless image into #Snapseed and boosting the saturation, darkening shadows and so on. Then I took the optimized version and took the shadows to maximum darkness, and reduced the overall brightness somewhat, leaving me with a reduced star version, with almost no nebula visible. Lastly, in Snapseed again, I used the double exposure tool to stack the two parts together.

And here is the result.

#Astronomy #Astrodon #Astrophotography #C63 #HelixNebula

Last night's effort, with some #Snapseed and Google photos editing with advice from @rdm for OCl 999.0 with Prawn Nebula.

#SmartTelescope #Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophotography #DwarfIII #Dwarf3 #DwarfLab #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography

@buddhawilliams well, I've had an exciting time with my clusterfudge. Firstly my final one just kept closing when I went to check on it, so, unlike the Titanic, was unsynchable.

So I quickly entered up another, well as quick as I could, on another tablet in case my first one wasn't stable because of the Beta Dwarf App. Phew, got that done.

Then my DwarfIII tried and tried to calibrate, but it looked like something was wrong with the focus, so @rdm found the option to reset the 0 point fhe second target to my immense surprise. I had no idea it was THAT resilient!

Hope yours is going well too!

My Dwarf 2 has settled on the VDB 102 reflection nebula for much of the night and the Great Winter Solstice-ish ClusterFudge is underway!he second target to my immense surprise. I had no idea it was THAT resilient!

Hope yours is going well too!

My Dwarf 2 has settled on the VDB 102 reflection nebula for much of the night and the Great Winter Solstice-ish ClusterFudge is underway!

#astrodon #LeecesClusterFudge #astronomy #SmartTelescope #DwarfII #DwarfIII #dwarflab #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #Astrophotography #BackYardAstronomy

Hello everybody and I hope you’ve been getting some clear skies for your telescoping if you’re into it. If you’re not into it, that’s cool, this may not be of interest to you.

It’s clagged over for me, but before it did, I was very busy with the sky indeed. Let me take you on a journey - the journey of the Leece’s ClusterFudge.

People who are familiar with my astronomy writings may remember that once I had a telescope of the smart persuasion I found I liked hunting Nebulae.

I thought they were beautiful and cool and interesting, and really gave one the impression of 3 dimensionality in the night sky, that space was indeed filled with vast depths.

Clusters, I said, especially Globular Clusters were not very interesting. They all look the same, I said, and they’re not really going to be on my dance card.

So I set my Dwarf II and Dwarf III for long periods to capture all sorts of nebulae and was happy over the course of a year and a half, during which time we volunteered at the Perth Astrofest and showed thousands of people how cool smart telescopes were, and I won an astrophotography prize.

We got Covid 19 and got great comfort from being able to put our telescopes out by barely leaving our recovery room, and watching the images build. I found by accident while chasing nebulae that some open clusters were quite interesting and beautiful, although nebulae were still where it was at for me.

We visited the Gravity Discovery Centre for one of their Astronomy Nights, and listened to the Chief Astronomer talk about globular clusters, and how some people thought that they all looked the same.

Yep that’s me I thought, but I listened and his enthusiasm touched me. Hmm, yes okay I thought, maybe I’ll take a look. Great tour, by the way, recommended.

So I had a look, and something started ticking away in my mind thoughtfully. These clusters sure are bright I thought. I bet they don’t need much time. Maybe if I lined up a lot of Globular Clusters next to each other, I could see the differences and develop an appreciation of them.

It might be fun to see just how many clusters I can take in a period of darkness. I’ll have to fudge together a schedule. And thus the inception of the LCF Catalogue- the Leece’s ClusterFudge Catalogue.

I started testing as to what the shortest period my telescopes could be set for during a scheduled shoot.

#Astrodon #Astronomy #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #Astrophotography #DwarfLab #Dwarf2 #Dwarf3

I just have to shout out to Dwarf for their customer service. My 3 got confused and after I'd been using it for 6 months, decided it wanted to be activated again, but wouldn't succesfully activate. When I reported this I was contacted quickly, and Sue let me know that the problem needed a zoom meeting and I booked a time.

Clare and an engineer whose name I didn't get then got us very patiently through the tricky process of navigating through what needed to be done - it's not simple when you're a Linux house like us! But with Linux wizard @rdm to assist they got us through and fixed the problem pretty quick considering two languages were employed! Lovely people and really helpful, and not afraid of challenges! Which we were. 😄 Thank you!

#dwarf3 #SmartTelescope #DwarfLab #Astrodon #Astrophotography

So a couple of days ago #Dwarflab dropped a new update for the #Dwarf3. This one added the ability to shoot a 2x2 (well 1.8x1.8 allowing for overlap) mosaic in Astro mode.

This comes with a couple of limitations - you must be in equatorial mode, and I don't think you can schedule a shoot. You can specify how many stacks, and you can combine sessions, so it is not all bad news.

Last night I tried it out on the reflection nebula region around Rho Ophiuchus. In these shots we have:
IC4603/4604/4605 NGC6093 (M80) and some more significant stars.

The results are interesting. Dwarf still have a little bit of work to do on equalising the exposures, but this region is particularly challenging in that respect. Post processing tends to bring out these issues, and I'm sure that manually processing the subs in Siril would completely remove them.

The new update also includes a watermarking feature, which is neat, but could stand to have the RA/Dec data included.

All-in-all a really useful update!

Note: Edited to remove limitations on exposure and gain -- they can be set to up to 120s/frame and whatever gain level you want.

#Astrophotography #Astrodon #Astronomy #BackyardAstronomy

I am officially impressed.

As you all know, I own a bunch of Dwarflab telescopes along with @leece .

Two years ago, Dwarflab made the DwarfII available to the general public after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Last year, they released an updated version, the Dwarf3.

Since then they have been releasing updates to the Dwarf3's firmware roughly once a month. Cool.

What has impressed me more is that roughly every two or three months, they have been releasing many of the same updates for the DwarfII.

Today I noticed that DwarfII had an update pending - this time they added the post-processing and multi-session stacking features, giving it almost the same feature set as the newer telescope.

This level support for a discontinued product is amazing in this day and age, so kudos to Dwarflab!

#Dwarf3 #DwarfII #Dwarflab #Astrophotography #SmartTelescope

Today we have a mosaic of two images, both taken the same night by two #Dwarf3 #SmartTelescopes from the roof of the studio at the back of our house, where we left them running all night, with the help of a pair of 10Ah USB-C powerpacks.

I targeted The Cat's Paw Nebula (NGC6334), while @leece targeted part of the nearby NGC6357. We both made sure to have the individual nebulae off-centre frame enough that we could get a slight overlap.

For both we have around 7 hours of exposure - 420ishx60s@80, both with the internal Ha/OIII filter.

We ran both images through the Dwarflab Stellar Studio to do a star removal, and recomposed both images with a star mask. Some final tuning in Snapseed, and then a manual combining of the two shots.

All up, about 2 hours actual effort, over three days.

#Astrophotography #Astrodon #NGC6334 #NGC6357 #MosaicImage #Nebula #Astronomy #Dwarflab #Snapseed

A couple of nights ago I let my #Dwarf3 stay out all night with a stellation mask, which bagged me about 8 hours worth of #Antares , #Messier4 , and other goodies, including the Antares #ReflectionNebula.

I ran it through the #DwarfLab #StellarStudio tools, and then did a bit more cleanup in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos - about 15 minutes work.

I'm pretty darned pleased with the results.

#astronomy #astrophotography #Astrodon #SmartTelescope #Nebula #Star #GlobularStarCluster

Hello folks, it's been a little while so lets get some sky happening down here in #PerthWesternAustralia

I've been enjoying my Dwarf3 telescope, so let me share with you the unicorn's nostril (true, you look at Monoceras and that's where it is!), the Rosette Nebula, or Caldwell 49.

We also have IC 2944 another great Nebula, but one I'm in extreme doubt about its popular name to the extent that I'm going to use my own name for it, so let me introduce you to the Rising Phoenix Nebula. If you want to use the other name that's fine but lalalalala I can't hear you.

Both those images are straight out of camera. I think at least 400 frames but I'd have to check my records as it was a week or two ago.

The next subject is a bit small, I've cropped it a bit to make up for it somewhat. It's NGC 2997, a spiral galaxy in Antlia the Bellows. Why have I bothered given that I like an apparent size of 20 or so minutes, and this doesn't even get to 10? Well, it's one of these rare, to my view, straight on spiral galaxies, it's not edge on, so it gets a pass. And this got a good couple of hours last night, and turned out really well, I dickered a little with Snapseed. We had some rain, and wow, the sky was very clean and clear, and this object shows it. I really want to do a longer exposure, even if it's little.

And the last one is one that did get that longer treatment - it's the notorious Centaurus A, commonly known as the Hamburger Galaxy. I left this one on the roof overnight preprogrammed for a good few hours and this comes to you also from straight out of camera. It really is a peculiar galaxy, and sports a couple of supernovae and a dust cloud that gives it that split look.

#astronomy #BackYardAstronomy #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #DwarfIII #DwarfLab

première astrophotographie d’Orion avec mon labo nain numéro 3
#dwarflab

This $479 Smart Telescope Lets Anyone Shoot Beautiful Astro Photos https://petapixel.com/2024/07/18/this-479-smart-telescope-lets-anyone-shoot-beautiful-astro-photos/ #astrophotography #smarttelescope #Equipment #telescope #dwarflab #nightsky #dwarf3 #astro #space #News

@howard My son used a #DwarfLab Dwarf II digital #telescope I got him for #Christmas. I think he said he used 15 second exposures and stacked images. The image is cropped also I think.

https://dwarflab.com/products/dwarf-2-smart-telescope