Tanja Schmitz

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Funny how your favourite edits are sometimes the ones you never planned to photograph. 🔭I was out waiting for the Heart ...
09/03/2026

Funny how your favourite edits are sometimes the ones you never planned to photograph. 🔭

I was out waiting for the Heart Nebula to clear the trees and needed something to fill the time, so I turned the rig towards NGC 7000, the North America Nebula, and its neighbouring dark nebula LDN 935. No real plan, just a way to keep the session productive while I waited.

I’m so glad I did. This turned out to be one of my favourite edits in a while. Zoom in on that dark nebula and the amount of clarity and structure sitting in there genuinely surprised me, all that quiet detail hiding in the dust.

Full res and all the capture details are up on my AstroBin (link in bio) if you want to get properly lost in it.

I’m so stoked that I’ve finally hit a personal goal: 10+ hours on a single target. And what better subject: the Iris Neb...
09/02/2026

I’m so stoked that I’ve finally hit a personal goal: 10+ hours on a single target. And what better subject: the Iris Nebula.

Do go check this out on my ASTRO MOONBIN profile for a high resolution. 👌 Instagram is never a true representation of the hours we pour into the hobby.

This project wasn’t without its flaws . I had to cut about 4 hours of data due to dew, which would have made it a 15 hour project (not a small feat for an astro backyard photographer fighting Mother Nature). Despite that, I’m happy with how it turned out, and I’m definitely enjoying the superior LZOS glass in the Officina Stellare HiperAPO.

I’d love your suggestions on how to improve, or a suggestion for another dark nebula.

AstroBin ZWO_astronomy ZWO Agena Astro

08/31/2026

Wait for it. ..

🌖 and 🦅

🔭 Eclipse evening of 27 August.

Updated 📷 Captured with a Sony a7 IV: seven exposures, each one bracketed manually rather than relying on auto-bracketin...
08/30/2026

Updated 📷 Captured with a Sony a7 IV: seven exposures, each one bracketed manually rather than relying on auto-bracketing

The dynamic range across an eclipsed Moon is brutal: the sunlit sliver is still blazing while the umbral portion goes deep copper and rust.

No single exposure was going to hold both. So this is a manually aligned and layered composite, blended in Photoshop to pull detail out of each region.

The result leans into that HDR look, revealing the shading and colour gradient through the shadow that a single frame simply can’t capture.

The star of the show tonight. 🌙👌Single shot. 📷 Sony A7iv 🔭 500mm - Officina Stellare - Bracketed edit to follow.
08/28/2026

The star of the show tonight. 🌙👌

Single shot.
📷 Sony A7iv
🔭 500mm - Officina Stellare

- Bracketed edit to follow.

08/13/2026

The colo(u)r of night…
⭐️🔭📷
Don’t stop looking up

Photos by me 🙋🏼‍♀️

The Crescent Nebula is an emission nebula located roughly 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, and ...
08/11/2026

The Crescent Nebula is an emission nebula located roughly 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, and has a glowing, brain-like or crescent-shaped cosmic shell.

Imaged from my backyard using 5nm Ha and Oiii filters paired with the William Optics RedCat 61. At a 300mm focal length, the wide field of view captures the Crescent Nebula beautifully framed within its cosmic surroundings, making it truly stand out.

The blue glow enshrouding the Crescent Nebula images comes from Doubly Ionized Oxygen gas (When an atom is ionized, it has lost or gained electrons. “Doubly ionized” means the atom has had two electrons completely stripped away from it.) .

HOO palette
🔭6h40 integration time 📷
Stars shown here are from the SHO process.

Think about it… it’s pretty amazing stuff, right?

08/07/2026

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

⭐️ Carl Sagan.

🫶🔭✨ I imagine this is what a 🚀 ride would look like ⭐️
Catch the full version on Astrobin.

NGC7000 featuring LDN935 ✨👌 7 hours of photons SHO processing is definitely a love/hate relationship for me, but every ...
08/06/2026

NGC7000 featuring LDN935 ✨👌 7 hours of photons

SHO processing is definitely a love/hate relationship for me, but every edit is a chance to sharpen the workflow and find my rhythm.

Can we talk about H-alpha for a second? I’m obsessed with the sheer drama, detail, and depth it brings out.

Slide 3: Ha
slide 4: Oiii
Slide 5: Sii

🔭
This target was captured over several nights, battling moody weather and fatigue. Full transparency: this was originally just a “target to pass the time” while waiting for the Heart Nebula to clear the horizon, so I definitely regret not framing it better!

I ran into a classic astrophotography plot twist during processing: I got deep into the edit before realizing my RGB data wasn’t registered to this dataset. Rather than backing up, I pushed through. The plan now is to do a full re-edit using the RGB data for a cleaner SHO mix and natural RGB stars, saving that headache for the next cloudy night.

Constructive feedback and processing tips are always welcome!

(Personally I don’t feel like LDN935 looks like the gulf of mexico - it looks like a tiny creature with one glowing eye that crawls out the ground and messes with your guiding when you’re not looking)

See the image deets on AstroBin

NGC7000 featuring LDN935 ✨👌 SHO processing is definitely a love/hate relationship for me, but every edit is a chance to ...
08/06/2026

NGC7000 featuring LDN935 ✨👌

SHO processing is definitely a love/hate relationship for me, but every edit is a chance to sharpen the workflow and find my rhythm.

Can we talk about H-alpha for a second? I’m obsessed with the sheer drama, detail, and depth it brings out.

Slide 3: Ha
slide 4: Oiii
Slide 5: Sii

🔭
This target was captured over several nights, battling moody weather and fatigue. Full transparency: this was originally just a “target to pass the time” while waiting for the Heart Nebula to clear the horizon, so I definitely regret not framing it better!

I ran into a classic astrophotography plot twist during processing: I got deep into the edit before realizing my RGB data wasn’t registered to this dataset. Rather than backing up, I pushed through. The plan now is to do a full re-edit using the RGB data for a cleaner SHO mix and natural RGB stars, saving that headache for the next cloudy night.

Constructive feedback and processing tips are always welcome!

(Personally I don’t feel like LDN935 looks like the gulf of mexico - it looks like a tiny creature with one glowing eye that crawls out the ground and messes with your guiding when you’re not looking)

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