The Space Koala

20/09/2026

My Astro vacation in Cyprus is coming to an end

The Never Stop Looking Up event at the Cyprus Planetarium, the first of its kind, was an amazing experience. Interesting talks, lovely and always welcoming people, and lots of stargazing. I guess they have it easy: organizing a star party must be a lot less stressful when the sky is clear basically every night 😭 (no I’m not jealous at all 🙄)

In addition to looking at the starry skies, I also got to visit some beautiful places all around the island. There’s an amazingly high concentration of cats 🐈😍

Now back to reality, but with lots of new experiences, new friends, and photos to process 🤩

19/09/2026

🦇

I absolutely love the Dark Bat Nebula in the constellation of Ophiucus (not to be confused with the Bat nebula in Cepheus) - the longer you look at it the more it actually looks like a bat. Animal shaped dark nebulas have to be among my favorite objects to photograph. Usually the recipe is simple: dark skies and tons of integration time.

For the Bat, it was not as easy as the best time to photograph it is during the shortest nights of the year, and from my vantage point, it only comes up to a photographable height for a very short period of time. I already had a go at it last year, but unfortunately I didn’t get anything decent. This year’s result is slightly better, though I may try to combine the two.

Coincidentally, it is also my first finished photo taken with my RASA 11 telescope that I got last December. I have not posted much about it as I still don’t feel it is “ready” - ideally I would like to pair it with my full frame camera.

18/09/2026

Every star in this photo is in our Milky Way, except one!

A bright, Type Ia supernova dubbed SN 2026aaiv was discovered on September 1st in NGC 7331 in Pegasus - within the so-called Deerlick Group.

This was a quick image to observe the incredibly bright phenomenon - a few shots on my last night before I left for the Never Stop Looking Up Astronomy Event in Cyprus.

As such, the image was always going to have limited integration time, but this was worsened by the fact that after a short time, clouds rolled in. As a result, I did not collect any data with the blue filter. In order not to throw away my data, I generated a synthetic blue channel subtracting my green and red channels from my luminance channel. Though this data is not of scientific value, mathematically it is valid.

At its brightest, the supernova reached approx. magnitude 12.2, which means it was visible with just a small telescope - even though the host galaxy is some 45 Million light years away from us.

15/09/2026

Daytime viewing of Venus and the Moon at the awesome looking Τroodos Οbservatory
The instrument is a 20” Planewave CDK. I’ll definitely have to go back at night to see the stars with it too

11/09/2026

I arrived at the Cyprus Planetarium for the Don’t Stop Looking Up astrophotography festival that will be kicking off tonight. I’ll be giving talks on what makes an astrophoto actually good and on organizing trips under dark skies
This morning we had a tour of the venue, which is basically a giant playground for space nerds - I absolutely loved it! 😍
Oh and spot the clouds in the sky, it seems like there aren’t any, ever. Majorly jealous of Cypriot astronomers 😁

05/09/2026

Fall Season Open!

Last year I spent over 80 hours shooting a target I found to be a challenge. Turns out it was nowhere near enough! So, I'm continuing this year. Fingers crossed for loads of clear, moonless skies!

05/09/2026

Vulpecula Rift

When choosing targets, sometimes I like to browse around a sky map until I find an area that looks as though it might contain interesting dark-nebula structures. This image of the Vulpecula Rift was chosen in exactly that way.

Vulpecula lies against one of the rich star fields of the summer Milky Way, with countless bright stars scattered across the frame. The dark structures winding between them are not empty regions of space. They are clouds of cold interstellar gas and dust blocking the light from stars behind them.

The Vulpecula Rift forms part of the much larger system of dark clouds that divides the visible band of the Milky Way. This region also contains molecular material associated with ongoing star formation. What attracted me to this composition was not one prominent object, but the contrast between that incredibly dense field of stars and the dark dust cutting through it.

01/09/2026

The original version of this image showed Andromeda in the most familiar way: the galaxy stretching diagonally from corner to corner, with both of its satellite galaxies, M32 and M110, completing the classic composition. It was a perfectly good but perfectly average image.

I therefore decided to crop further into the central region and let the internal structure of the galaxy become the subject of the image. In the tighter framing, the dust lanes are no longer just dark bands around a bright core. They break up into overlapping arcs, fine irregular structures and layers of texture cutting through the glow of the galaxy. The contrast between the intensely bright centre and the darker material surrounding it also becomes much more striking. Although the crop leaves out some of Andromeda’s enormous overall scale, I think it gives the image far more depth and makes the detail captured by the telescope much easier to appreciate.

30/08/2026

The Coathanger is probably my favorite summer asterism, and it was an obvious target for testing the Askar N160 newtonian telescope. It looks simple, but this is quite a demanding field: countless small stars, several extremely bright ones, and a huge difference in brightness across the image.

Also known as Collinder 399 or Brocchi’s Cluster, the Coathanger is not a real star cluster. Its familiar shape is simply a chance alignment of stars at different distances. The small cluster at the far right is NGC 6802, which is a genuine open cluster.

I combined five-minute RGB exposures with ten-second exposures for the bright stars. Even at ten seconds, the brightest ones were still saturated or very close to it. I would probably add a set of one- or two-second exposures if I photographed it again.

I also like how the diffraction spikes look on the brighter stars.

29/08/2026

Which Seestar Pro model makes more sense in 2026?
Should I upgrade to the new S50Pro if I already have an S30Pro?
Which one takes better pictures?

These are just some of the questions I addressed in my S30Pro vs S50Pro comparison video.

ZWOSeestar S30 Pro vs S50 Pro full comparison, covering image quali...