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Julian

@crazed_conceptions

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🇩🇪 German Astrophotographer
Exploring the Night Sky with a Dual-Lens Telescope at the speed of light! 🫡
High-Res Images, Tutorials & more below!

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So here's an image that I recently discovered in my files, which is roughly six years old and stems from the very beginning of my Astrophotography journey. I originally hadn't ever planned on posting this image simply because it was made up of many untracked 8-second exposures with a cheap DSLR camera and a rather poorly performing 50mm lens. But knowing what I do now, it turns out that there was a great amount of awesome detail in there, even for an unmodified camera!

This image really reminded me of where I Began and how far I've come since and how there's always something to salvage as long as you keep trying and never stop learning.

I am currently working on pretty much the biggest project I have ever undertaken and I plan on finishing it before the year is over. It's going to fundamentally change they way I approach this hobby and I'm really looking forward to sharing it with this awesome community, with hopefully it being a meaningful contribution.

Speaking of, my Telescope setup has arrived in Texas and is one faulty equipment piece away from being operational! More will follow once that is fixed...

I hope you enjoyed even this moderate and unspectacular image of our own Galaxy! I certainly have and I am looking forward to sharing so much more of the insignificant, as well as the seriously significant things space has to offer.

With that being said, clear skies! taken in Black Forest, Germany by @crazed_conceptions

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2 months ago

Partial solar eclipse over the Swiss Alps 🇨🇭

Yesterday, Europe witnessed one of the most spectacular astronomical events in decades — the 2026 solar eclipse. 🌒

While totality crossed parts of Spain, large areas of Europe experienced a deep partial eclipse. From my location in Switzerland, the Sun reached around 91% coverage.

This is probably one of my favorite images from that evening: the solar crescent slowly touching the Swiss mountains, with a few clouds drifting across the scene just before sunset.

Captured with the @sonyalphaeu 200–600mm + @viltrox.official 2× Teleconverter at 1200mm.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to Spain for totality because of work, but I’m incredibly happy that I still managed to spend the night in Switzerland photographing both the eclipse and the Perseid Meteor hower.

About the Perseids… absolutely insane. This was probably my best Perseid night ever. So many bright meteors, countless big ones and even two fireballs.

There is definitely a lot more coming from this trip.

#astrophotography taken in Flüela Pass by @crazed_conceptions

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2 months ago

Cosmic Eye

This image has been six months in the making. Not because I was "making" it for six months (more like 16 hours), but because I hadn't found any motivation to actually move forward with the data. To give some context, this data was the result of a trip to La Palma with @jkbsahner in december, which was plagued by misfortunes and bad weather. In addition to that, I have lost the package with my remote setup, which was meant to go to texas not once, but TWICE! Due to that I simply couldn't be bothered to process this image, especially considering that the data wasn't particularly good either. That in return was partially my fault, since I am very new to landscape astrophotography.

I'm glad that I took the plunge though, because I think it turned out exactly as I had envisioned it. Of the entire week we spent in La Palma, this was taken during the only good night we had. I had spent most of the night at a different spot trying to capture a different motive (my last post), so I really had to rush over to this spot and fight against time, since the night was running out. Luckily everything worked out and I am very pleased with the result.

This definitely makes me look forward to more landscape astrophotography trips this year, especially in the swiss alps. Let me know what you think :) taken in Roque de los Muchachos by @crazed_conceptions

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5 months ago

Twilight Telescopes

Here it is, my first ever real Landscape Astrophotography Image! I started this journey in the first half of 2025 because I had no real way to do Deepsky Imaging. The journey of getting to the point where I was able to produce this image has been long, cold, frustrating but also rewarding. There is still a ton of stuff to learn, but I'm glad I'm at a point where I can produce a satisfying image! :)

On a pretty spontaneous Discord call, @jkbsahner and I decided to head to the Island of La Palma to take some awesome images of the winter milkyway. In hindsight a million things went wrong and I only managed to get one proper full night of imaging out of the intended seven, but it was enough to get a couple of images, this one being the first.

The ~23 meter wide telescopes are the northern parts of the CTAO (Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory), which is a global network of telescopes that study gamma rays. Being there was a true privilege!

Sadly the site is restricted and I couldn't get closer due to the vegetation, but I still managed to achieve my goal of aligning the closest telescope between the setting milkyway and the strong zodiacal light on La Palma.

I hope you enjoy the image, there will be more to come!

Nikon Z6A | Sigma 40mm 1.4 | Skywatcher Star Adventurer
Tracked & Focus Stacked Panorama

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#astrophotography #milkyway #nightphotography #longexposure #space
@nikoneurope
@sigma_deutschland taken in La Palma, Canary Islands by @crazed_conceptions

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10 months ago

Here's my first ever timelapse! I took it during my recent trips to the Swiss Alps.

Considering the fact that my remote setup will likely never arrive in Texas (UPS currently wants to destroy it, lol) I've been shifting my focus a bit more towards landscape.

Expect more to come! :) by @crazed_conceptions

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a year ago

Beauty in all things

So basically this image is the result of my yearning for imaging. I am currently in the process of preparing a completely new setup, which involved buying/selling a whole bunch of things.

Due to that, I didn't really have the components required to have the setup up and running right now. But the sky was clear last night and I wanted to image anyways. While the image might appear "clean" on the first look, it actually was a hard fight to get it to this point.

The spacing from my Samyang 135mm F2 Lens was off by around 2mm. When working at F2, 2mm is a huge amount and results in major star aberrations, to the point where a star alignment fails.

But even in ugly data can lie some beauty, so I hope you enjoy the image :)

Samyang 135mm F2
Atik APX60
20min Halpha, 20min Oiii, 20min Sii by @crazed_conceptions

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a year ago

Orion on Fire 🔥

The image you can see here is a two panel mosaic with a final resolution of 99 Megapixels, which will 100% get ruined by Instagram! Either way, it is the result of using three cameras and lenses for a whole 1.5 nights under bortle 4 skies to capture enough photons to make this work.

The most prominent feature is the crescent shaped structure on the left side of the image, which is a large field of gas called Barnard's Loop. It encompasses many known objects, most prominently the Great Orion Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula, the Which Head Nebula and the bright blue star Rigel, which can easily be identified with the naked eye.

The goal here was to deliver an image both in broadband and narrowband, so the final result was a level weighted HaRGB-Coomposite.

Let us know what you think :) and if you want a proper view of this image, check out the high-res version on Astrobin! (Links in Bio)

Gear:
3x Samyang 135mm used at F2 (Halpha) and F2.8 (RGB)
Atik APX60
Sony A7iii
Nikon Z6
~13 hours of Integration Time
Too many hours in PixInsight & PS🌚 taken in Schauinsland, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany by @crazed_conceptions

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2 years ago

Awakened

20 years ago, images of this region likely showed nothing but a little blue around the seven stars that make up the bright blue Pleiades star cluster.

However, as the imaging technology improved, new possibilities have opened for us. This image is an example of that. There are vast fields of ionized hydrogen, burning across the whole starfield. In addition, I also managed to get a couple of minutes of Oxygen and Sulfur exposures, mapped to blue and yellow respectively. In retrospective I am extremely glad that I did so, because even that tiny amount of data gave the image a new layer of depth.

I hope you enjoy it!

Gear:
2x Samyang 135mm, used wide open
ATIK APX60 Monochrome
Sony A7S modified
10 Hours of Integration Time taken in Feldberg (Schwarzwald) by @crazed_conceptions

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2 years ago

A Cosmic Zoo

What do a Bat, a Squid, a Seahorse and an Elephant have in common? Oh right, we can see them all in the Constellation Cepheus. What a hot mess this area is!

This image represents a new beginning for me. A new Setup, a new shooting location, a new chapter in life. This is a test shot taken with my dual Samyang 135mm F2 Setup, so I didn’t really have high expectations for it, but it turned out a lot better than I anticipated. The overall integration time across all channels sums up to around 15 hours of LRGBSHO.

Still, the data wasn’t exactly clean and I had numerous issues ranging from tilt, to software problems, all they way to voltage shortness in the field. Most of this has been adressed by now, so I’m super excited for Orion season and all the amazing targets that come with it. My first serious image with the new setup is already in the making :)

Shoutout to @jkbsahner for helping me learn how to use the Sony A7S, she’s a very picky lady that has the highest of requirements lol taken in Feldberg (Schwarzwald) by @crazed_conceptions

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2 years ago

The Aftermath

Wow. Two years without Astrophotography. I've never been this busy in my entire life, but at some point you have to go back to what you love, right?

I spent a lot of time reflecting on my images, my gear, my astrophotography in general. Although this year is set to be recordbreakingly busy, I am set on returning to this awesome hobby!

Right now there are very few opportunities for me to gather new data, but there's more than enough to reprocess. I spent a lot of time refining my processing skills over the years and although the past two had a lot of inactivity, I feel like I learned more than ever.

The plans for 2024 and especially 2025 are absolutely insane, there are exciting times ahead :)

This image of NGC 6992, the Veil Nebula, carries the name "The Aftermath". On a superficial level this refers to the fact that the nebula is a supernova remnant, which is why I originally chose it. On a more personal level though, I chose this image specifically to return to astrophotography, because after having spent thousands of hours on that hobby and subsequently taking a long break, I was able to see "the aftermath" of it. I saw how far I'd come, but also how far I could still reach. So cheers to that, I'm looking forward to getting back into this community! by @crazed_conceptions

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2 years ago

A new Beginning😎

Life often disrupts our plans in many ways... But we gotta keep on going right?

I had the wildest astrophotography plans last year and then life decided to go crazy. I've been pretty disinterested in Astrophotography lately, mainly because I neither have time nor the right setup for galaxy season... But when I finally bought my new laptop something sparked!

When you scroll down my page and take a look at my other versions of this image, you should quickly see that there are a billion different possibilities to edit images, but hopefully also some improvement.

I believe that having a slow computer actually makes your images worse - there were times that I had to wait for 10+ minutes for a process to finish. At the end of it I had forgotten what I wanted to achieve. I always overprocessed the images (still do, lol) and it led to them not reaching their fullest potential.

I'm really happy with the result of this iteration and I believe it's one of the cleanest M81+IFN images out there. Gotta pat yourself on the shoulder every now and then, right?

Keep rocking guys, clear skies!

#m81 #bodesgalaxy #galaxy #happy #astrophotography #newmilkyway #ig_freiburg#spaceclub #space #spaceclub #celestron #clearskynetwork #qhy #astronomy #nightphotography #deepsky #weltraum #milchstraße #astrofotografie #漂亮 #telescope #nasa #Germany #astrofotografie #nachtfotografie #Galaxie #nebel #sterne #weltall by @crazed_conceptions

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4 years ago

First light!!!

Yeah I know, you've seen about a billion heart nebula images today. Ironically, this image has NOTHING to do with valentine's day, it's just a "happy" accident.

I've been waiting to take the first real image with my new setup for about half a year now, and finally I got the chance.

The depth, the contrast, the details, it's just out of this world. I can happily say that unless I spend 50k €, this is literally my dream setup.

So, what do you actually see in that image? It's a glowing emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia, called the Heart Nebula (IC1805).

The image was captured through the incredible @baaderplanetarium High Speed F2 Ultra Narrowband Ha/Oiii/Sii filters. My new love, the @atik_cameras APX60 attached to a RASA 11" sucked in those photons real fast and a Skywatcher EQ8 mount tracked all of it.

Question of the day: Guess how much exposure was needed for this image! Let me know in the comments😇

#heartnebula #heart #valentine #ic1805 #sho #baader #atik #astrophotography #newmilkyway #ig_freiburg#spaceclub #space #spaceclub #celestron #clearskynetwork #qhy #astronomy #nightphotography #deepsky #weltraum #milchstraße #astrofotografie #漂亮 #telescope #nasa #germany by @crazed_conceptions

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5 years ago