Instagram story viewer> @obstechchile> Tagged

ObsTech

@obstechchile

6.7K

followers

703

following

Host your telescope at Chile's premier remote observatory. 310+ clear nights/yr & 1.0 - 1.5" seeing. Tag @obstechchile to be featured.

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Bernes 142 is a dark cloud at the heart of Chamaeleon I, one of the Sun’s nearest stellar nurseries at roughly 600 light years. Bernes’ 1977 catalogue surveyed bright nebulae buried in opaque dust. This field holds three, each a lantern lit by a star that has only just begun to shine. From Chile, this southern cloud circles the celestial pole without setting.

Right of center and a little below, Cederblad 111, an electric blue reflection nebula, wraps around HD 97048, a young Herbig Ae/Be star still carrying its birth disk. Dust streams past in fine combed filaments, like smoke caught in a beam of light. Upper left, Cederblad 110 answers in warm amber, a reflection nebula split by a dark lane and hollowed into a C shape. Hidden within is Ced 110 IRS 4, a protostellar binary so deeply embedded that only infrared telescopes can see it. Its light has let the James Webb Space Telescope probe the ices frozen onto the cloud’s grains.

Below and right of the blue, the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula opens as a small orange fan: a bipolar reflection nebula carved by jets from a newborn low mass star tunneling out of the cloud. Faint crimson knots between the nebulae are shocked gas where other outflows strike the cloud.

What holds me in this image is how much of it is dark. The nebulae are small islands in a molecular cloud folding over itself in brown and ochre layers thick enough to swallow the background stars. Seventeen hours of exposure went into that darkness, chasing the cloud’s faint texture until the shadows themselves became the subject.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
🔭 PlaneWave CDK500 Observatory System
📸 Moravian C5A-100M Camera
🎨 Chroma L, R, G, B Filters
📀 L: 68×300s, R: 80×180s, G: 78×180s, B: 74×180s (17.27 hours)
🖥️ Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #stargazing #deepsky #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #passioneastrofotografia #birth #blue #orange #infrared #lantern #lanterns

1k

37

NGC 3981 looks like a galaxy coming undone. An amber heart burns through knotted dust, while blue spiral arms trail away in long, ragged veils. Follow them far enough and their light becomes almost indistinguishable from the darkness. Some 65 million light-years away in Crater, NGC 3981 bears the marks of gravity’s restless tides in its windswept arms. Yet for all that has pulled at it, stretched it, and tried to reshape it, the galaxy holds.

Even in the field of the mighty PlaneWave CDK20, it is a dot. And that is not all that makes it brutal to process. The core is bright, structured and unforgiving, while the outer arms live barely above the noise floor and must be coaxed out of the darkness. Reveal too little and they disappear. Push too far and the darkness begins inventing things that aren’t there. Much of the work was simply knowing when to stop.

I began collecting this light early in the year and continued for months from my CDK500 at Obstech, Chile. A camera change from the Moravian C3-61000 PRO to the C5A-100M complicated things; different datasets, multiple sets of biases, darks and flats, and plenty of troubleshooting with the Obstech crew before it all finally came together.

But this image of the Wind-Swept Galaxy was never really about the equipment; it had a specific destination: For my wife, @laramarrr, on her 50th birthday.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
🔭 PlaneWave CDK500 Observatory System
📸 Moravian C3-61000 PRO and C5A-100M Cameras
🎨 Chroma L, R, G and B Filters
📀 L: 82x600s, R: 82x300s, G: 93x300s, B: 91x300s (35.83 hours)
🖥️ Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #stargazing #deepsky #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #passioneastrofotografia #wind #swept #ngc3981 #strong #enterprise

5k

20

There are objects you image, and there are objects you owe. The Great Carina Nebula is the southern sky’s masterpiece—a star-forging wilderness vast enough to swallow the full Moon many times over. Though 8,500 light-years away, nearly six times farther than Orion, it still blazes brighter. This frame holds its beating heart.

At the center, tangled in ribbons of gold, burns Eta Carinae, one of the most massive and volatile stars known. During the Great Eruption of the 1840s, it hurled ten Suns’ worth of matter into space and briefly became the second-brightest star in the night sky before vanishing into the twin-lobed Homunculus of its own making. Beside it hangs the Keyhole, the hooked silhouette of dust John Herschel sketched nearly two centuries ago.

The blue lagoon of doubly ionized oxygen at the core is carved by two young star cities: Trumpler 16, home to Eta Carinae, and the dense diamond swarm of Trumpler 14. Their fierce O stars have hollowed a glowing cavity in the cloud; where their radiation strikes, Carina answers in waves of rose and magenta, threaded by black rivers of drifting dust.

Nearly twenty-two hours went into this SHO-enhanced RGB rendering. True RGB anchors the palette, hydrogen deepens the reds, oxygen lifts the blue heart, and sulfur reveals structure almost as a pseudo-luminance. I wanted the core luminous but unburned, the Keyhole crisp, and the outer dust allowed to remain dark. Carina is not merely a spectacle of light—it is a cloud tearing itself apart while building new suns from the wreckage.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
🔭 PlaneWave CDK500 Observatory System
📸 Moravian C5A-100M Camera
🎨 Chroma R, G, B, 3nm Ha, Oiii and Sii Filters
📀 R: 18×300s, G: 16×300s, B: 19×300s, Ha: 19×1200s, Oiii: 18×1200s, Sii: 15×1200s (21.75 hours)
🖥️ Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #stargazing #deepsky #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #passioneastrofotografia #eta #carina #homunculus #trumpler

4k

28

81

9

NGC 5078 is an edge-on spiral galaxy adrift in the quiet reaches of Hydra, roughly 90 million light-years away. Its golden core burns at the center of a soft, pale halo of ancient stars, and slicing across that light is the galaxy’s defining feature: a ragged, knotted dust lane that runs the full length of the disk. Where many edge-on spirals wear their dust as a thin, disciplined line, the lane in NGC 5078 is torn and turbulent, fraying into dark tendrils that spill above and below the plane. That distortion is not decoration. It is evidence of an encounter still in progress.

The culprit hangs just beside it: IC 879, a small spiral caught in NGC 5078’s gravitational grip. In the image it appears as a delicate blue-white swirl twisted into a soft S, its cool tones a quiet counterpoint to the warm gold of its larger neighbor. The two galaxies are close enough to be exchanging more than glances. Tidal forces from the passage have roughened the larger galaxy’s dust lane and wound the little companion out of shape. It is a portrait of galactic interaction at its most intimate scale, not the head-on collision of the Antennae but a slow, deliberate distortion, two islands of stars reshaping one another across a narrow strait of darkness.

Over 25 hours of integration went into this rendering. Long luminance exposures pull the faint stellar halo and the outer reaches of the disk out of the sky, and the RGB preserves the delicate color balance between the aging golden core and the cooler tones at the disk’s edge.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
🔭 PlaneWave CDK600 Observatory System
📸 Moravian C5A-100M Camera
🎨 Chroma L, R, G, and B Filters
📀 L: 55×600s, R: 70×300s, G: 60×300s, B: 61×300s (25.08 hours)
🖥️ Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #beautiful #stargazing #deepsky #planet #planets #orbital #orbitals #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #beautiful #passioneastrofotografia #ngc5078 #spiral

2k

37

NGC 6164: The Dragon's Egg Nebula in Ara 🐉

Somewhere in Ara, 4,200 light years from here, a dragon has left its egg glowing in the dark.

It formed in violence. The brilliant star at its center, HD 148937, was once two stars, locked in a spiral that ended in a devouring embrace. The survivor emerged changed, magnetic, strangely young, and it flung the remains of that night skyward, where they still curl around it as a perfect egg of rose colored fire. When John Herschel swept the southern sky nearly two centuries ago, he caught its twin lobes as two separate objects, NGC 6164 and NGC 6165, never suspecting they were halves of a single creature born of a single catastrophe.

But look past the egg. Almost too faint to believe, a chrysalis of blue oxygen breathes around the whole scene, shell within translucent shell, the ghost of winds that blew before the collision. This is what I came for. Night after night the 1200 second exposures fell like drops into a well, almost 25 hours in all, until the halo finally rose out of the blackness like breath on cold glass, hydrogen holding the egg in warm rose light while oxygen spun its silk around everything.

A few degrees away, the Fighting Dragons of Ara rear against the same darkness. I captured that earlier this year and you can see it further down in my posts. I like to think the sky keeps its stories together: the beasts locked in battle, and here, wrapped in blue silk and waiting, the egg they guard. Every dragon guards its treasure.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
🔭 PlaneWave CDK600 Observatory System
📸 Moravian C5A-100M Camera
🎨 Chroma Ha, Oiii, R, G, and B Filters
📀 Ha: 37×1200s, Oiii: 32×1200s, R: 16×120s, G: 19×120s, B: 19×120s (24.80 hours)
🖥️ Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #beautiful #stargazing #deepsky #planet #planets #orbital #orbitals #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #beautiful #passioneastrofotografia #dragon #dragons #egg

11k

41

One dataset, 5 completely different visions.

SP_0227 - 68 hours under Chilean skies is this month's exclusive drop for @picastroapp Titan members. Look what the community did with the exact same masters!

Featured:
@bsastro85
@tryggvedyrvik
@astro_fritz
@lowell_astrophotography

Two ways to get your hands on data like this:

→ @picastroapp Titan : a new exclusive dataset every month, first.

→ spacetimepictures.com Pass : a new master, every single day.

However you process, the data's waiting. Tag us in your edits and we'll reshare!

Cheers :)

239

9

NGC 6514: The Trifid Nebula

Few objects in the night sky combine such striking beauty with such rich astrophysical complexity as the Trifid Nebula. Nestled within the dense star fields of Sagittarius, approximately 5,200 light-years from Earth, NGC 6514 (or M20) is one of the Milky Way's most spectacular stellar nurseries.

Its iconic appearance is created by three distinct components existing together in a single region of space. The brilliant magenta glow is an emission nebula, where intense ultraviolet radiation from a young, massive star ionizes surrounding hydrogen gas. Dark lanes of dense interstellar dust carve dramatic divisions through the glowing cloud, giving the Trifid its distinctive three-lobed structure. Above the emission region, a delicate blue reflection nebula shines as starlight scatters from microscopic dust grains, creating one of the most beautiful natural color contrasts in the night sky.

One of the aspects I find most captivating about the Trifid is how it captures multiple stages of stellar evolution within a single field of view. It is a place where stars are being born, where young stars illuminate their natal clouds, and where the very materials that will eventually become future stars and planetary systems are already taking shape. It is, quite literally, a portrait of creation in progress.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
🔭 PlaneWave CDK600 Observatory System
📸 Moravian C5A-100M Camera
🎨 Chroma L, R, G, B Filters
📀 L: 44×600s, R: 62×300s, G: 48×300s, B: 43×300s (20.08 hours)
🖥️ Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #beautiful #stargazing #deepsky #planet #planets #orbital #orbitals #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #beautiful #passioneastrofotografia #trifid #lobes #flowers

3k

39

Bernes 146, or NGC 5367, is a rarely imaged reflection and dark nebula in Centaurus, part of the remarkable CG 12 complex—a high-latitude star-forming region that feels almost improbably suspended above the plane of the Milky Way. In this field, luminous blue dust gathers around young stars and spills outward into vast, smoke-like veils, while colder, darker lanes of obscuring material drift through the scene like ash carried on a cosmic current. It feels less like a fixed object and more like an atmosphere in motion, poised between revelation and disappearance.

What drew me to Bernes 146 is the extraordinary contrast of textures and color. The bright blue cores have an almost electric intensity, embedded within sweeping amber-brown dust that stretches far beyond them in delicate, translucent folds. There is a beautiful tension here between softness and structure: the nebula appears ethereal at first glance, yet the longer one looks, the more detail emerges in the faint outer wisps, the carved dark lanes, and the distant background galaxies shining through the field. It is a deeply contemplative region—quiet, intricate, and full of hidden depth.

This is one of those targets whose beauty arrives gradually. It reveals itself not through spectacle alone, but through nuance: subtle gradients, layered dust, and the intimate interplay between scattered starlight and shadow. Bernes 146 glows like a fragile island of reflection nebulosity wrapped in darkness, suspended at the threshold of visibility.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
🔭 PlaneWave CDK500 Observatory System
📸 Moravian C5A-100M Camera
🎨 Chroma L, R, G, B Filters
📀 L: 36x600s, R: 36x300s, G: 36x300s, B: 36x300s (15 hours)
🖥️ Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #beautiful #stargazing #deepsky #planet #planets #orbital #orbitals #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #beautiful #passioneastrofotografia #mountain #blue #dust

2k

21

LBN 990: An Interstellar Sunrise

LBN 990 is a quiet eruption of color within a vast field of dust — a luminous bloom of magenta, violet, and blue breaking through the darker clouds around it. The name Sunrise Nebula feels especially fitting here: not because it resembles a literal dawn, but because the whole region seems to be caught in the act of illumination. Light is gathering. Dust is parting. Something hidden is beginning to reveal itself.

At the heart of the image, the bright central stars ignite the surrounding nebulosity with a soft, radiant glow, while the darker filaments above and around them drift like smoke across the scene. There is wonderful complexity in the surrounding field: warm rust-colored dust, faint reflection nebulosity, small knots of brightness, and countless stars suspended at different depths. The result feels less like a single object and more like a threshold — a place where starlight is pushing its way through the interstellar night.

What I love about regions like LBN 990 is their subtle drama. They are not grand spiral galaxies or famous showpiece nebulae, but they carry a more intimate kind of beauty: the beauty of dust becoming visible, of young light scattering through ancient clouds, of the galaxy briefly letting us see the hidden architecture between the stars.

A sunrise, not over a horizon, but inside the Milky Way itself.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile: 
PlaneWave CDK500 Observatory System 
Moravian C5A-100M Camera 
Chroma L, R, G, and B Filters 
L: 36×600s, R: 36×300s, G: 36×300s, B: 36×300s (15 hours) 
Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #beautiful #stargazing #deepsky #planet #planets #orbital #orbitals #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #beautiful #passioneastrofotografia #sun #sunrise

5k

47

NGC 2359: A Duck, A Helmet, or A Hummingbird?

NGC 2359 is most often known as Thor’s Helmet, and sometimes affectionately as the Duck Nebula. Both names make sense: there is a mythic crest, a sweeping shell, and a strange creature-like silhouette emerging from the starfield. But in this rendition, I cannot help seeing something more delicate — almost a cosmic hummingbird, suspended mid-flight, its wings opening into the surrounding darkness while its luminous body glows with electric blue structure.

At the heart of NGC 2359 is a powerful Wolf-Rayet star, one of the rare and massive stellar engines that sculpt the space around them through intense radiation and violent stellar winds. Those winds have carved the surrounding gas into a vast, turbulent bubble, pushing oxygen-rich material outward into translucent blue veils while hydrogen glows along the swept-up edges in deep crimson. The result is a nebula that feels both fragile and ferocious: a creature of light formed by the pressure of a dying star.

This image was acquired in HOO + RGB, allowing the oxygen and hydrogen structures to carry the main nebular form while the RGB data preserves a more natural starfield. The central shell reveals intricate filaments, soft shock fronts, and overlapping folds of gas, while the extended wings stretch outward like motion frozen across interstellar time. Whether one sees a helmet, a duck, or a hummingbird, NGC 2359 remains one of the most beautiful examples of stellar transformation — a massive star writing its final chapters into the surrounding night.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
PlaneWave CDK500 Observatory System
Moravian C5A-100M Camera
Chroma R, G, B, 3nm Ha and 3nm Oiii Filters
R: 30×120s, G: 30×120s, B: 30×120s, H: 20×1200s, O: 20×1200s (16.33 hours)
Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #beautiful #stargazing #deepsky #planet #planets #orbital #orbitals #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #beautiful #passioneastrofotografia #hummingbird #duck #bird #thor #helmet

6k

39

M 83: The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy

M83 is one of the great spiral galaxies of the southern sky: a vast, luminous storm of stars, dust, and hydrogen light, rotating in Hydra some 15 million light-years away. Its golden core burns through a veil of tangled dust lanes, while blue stellar nurseries and rose-colored HII regions trace the spiral arms like embers caught in a cosmic whirlpool.

What drew me deeply into this rendition is the balance between scale and restraint. M83 is bright, intricate, and deceptively difficult: the temptation is to force it, to let aperture or signal become a blunt instrument. But at these focal lengths, the atmosphere is often the final lens. Having both telescopes next to each other has dawned this upon me: Resolution is not simply purchased in glass and metal; it is earned in seeing, sampling, focus, collimation, tracking, and the discipline to let the data speak without shouting over it.

Here, the galaxy resolves into a living structure: dust lanes braided into the core, knots of star formation scattered across the arms, faint outer extensions dissolving into the surrounding field, and small background galaxies quietly suspended beyond it. The Southern Pinwheel feels less like a static object and more like a weather system of creation — a celestial cyclone turning slowly through deep time.

Captured from my remote setup at Obstech in Chile:
PlaneWave CDK600 Observatory System
Moravian C5A-100M Camera
Chroma L, R, G, and B Filters L: 60×600s, R: 60×300s, G: 60×300s, B: 60×300s (25 hours) Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

#astronomy #astrophotography #galaxy #galaxies #nebula #star #stars #universe #space #moon #telescope #planewave #cosmos #beautiful #stargazing #deepsky #planet #planets #orbital #orbitals #milkyway #astrophoto #deepskyastrophotography #beautiful #passioneastrofotografia #pinwheel #wheel

4k

27