Spacetime Pictures

16/07/2026

16/07/2026

📷 Shot with a camera you could buy off the shelf.

Meet IC 434 and the Horsehead, one of the most beloved fields in the entire winter sky, some 1,300 light-years away in Orion.

Now here's the wild part. This wasn't captured with a cooled astronomical mono camera and a filter wheel. It was shot with a Canon RP, a regular consumer mirrorless, lightly modified, from a backyard in France. 22 hours through a 130mm refractor, and that's it.

A few years ago, a one-shot-colour photo camera pulling this kind of depth, contrast and detail out of a dark nebula would have been almost unthinkable. Today it rivals what dedicated mono rigs were producing not so long ago. The gear has come an astonishingly long way, and so has what's possible from your own backyard.

Available for the next 365 days on the first collaborative astrophotography platform.

💡 SP Tip: filter by acquisition type (e.g. OSC) to see just how far one-shot-colour has come 😉

🗓️ Today's processing challenge:
#️⃣ SP_0225
📖 IC 434 — The Horsehead & Flame
🌈 OSC (Canon RP, partially modified)
🌎 Backyard - France
🔭 TS-Optics Imaging Star 130mm f/5
⌛ 22h integration

Pass = unlimited master .fits to process 👉 spacetimepictures.com/datasets/SP_0225

🌌 Follow and enjoy our daily datasets.

Original astronomical data and processing by Photomax

16/07/2026

🦅 As close as it gets from Earth.

The Pillars of Creation...the beating heart of M16, the Eagle Nebula. Made famous by Hubble, they're one of the most iconic sights in the whole sky.

And this dataset gets you right up close: shot at 0.41"/px through a 10" Ritchey-Chrétien, resolving the pillars in the kind of detail that's about as far as you can push it from a backyard on Earth.

Fancy a different perspective? We've got M16 in the catalogue at all kinds of focal lengths, from sweeping wide fields to tight crops like this one. Same object, endless framings.

Available for the next 365 days on the first collaborative astrophotography platform.

💡 Tip: search by object name (e.g. M 16) and compare every focal length side by side 😉

🗓️ Today's processing challenge:
#️⃣ SP_0224
📖 M16 — The Pillars of Creation
🌈 HaOIII
🌎 Backyard - France
🔭 GSO 10" f/8 Ritchey-Chrétien with 0.67x reducer
⌛ 5h55m integration

Pass = unlimited master .fits to process 👉 spacetimepictures.com/datasets/SP_0224

🌌 Follow and enjoy our daily datasets.

Original astronomical data and processing by Photomax

14/07/2026

🐦 Three galaxies. Pick a favourite.

Meet the Grus Triplet, three spiral galaxies locked in a slow gravitational embrace some 60 to 70 million light-years away, in the southern constellation of Grus, the Crane.

They're not just posing side by side, but pulling at each other, tugging out tidal tails and warping each other's arms in a dance that'll play out over hundreds of millions of years.

So, which one's yours?
1️⃣ NGC 7582, the big, dusty barred spiral with an active nucleus feeding a supermassive black hole
2️⃣ NGC 7590, the quiet, elegant one, its spiral arms neatly wound
3️⃣ NGC 7599, the stretched, disturbed edge-on, clearly feeling the pull

Drop your pick in the comments 👇

Available for the next 365 days on the first collaborative astrophotography platform.

💡 Tip: filter by object type (e.g. Galaxy cluster) to find your next deep-sky challenge 😉

🗓️ Today's processing challenge:
#️⃣ SP_0219
📖 The Grus Triplet
🌈 LRGB
🌎 Remote - Obstech El Sauce, Chile
🔭 Planewave CDK17 f6.5
⌛ 23h30m integration

Pass = unlimited master .fits to process 👉 spacetimepictures.com/datasets/SP_0219
🌌 Follow and enjoy our daily datasets.

Original astronomical data and processing by Martin Pugh Astrophotography

13/07/2026

👑 The queen was admiring herself.

It's no coincidence that IC 59 is so hard to see: this cloud lives far too close to a star that won't stop shining.

The myth goes like this. Cassiopeia, queen of Aethiopia, boasted that her beauty rivalled that of the sea nymphs. Poseidon was not amused. Her punishment: to be bound to a throne and spun endlessly around the celestial pole, hanging upside down for half of eternity.

She's still at it. At the heart of her famous W burns Gamma Cassiopeiae, an eruptive variable so fierce that its radiation is actively eroding the clouds around it. IC 59 shines only because the vain queen's light falls upon it... and consumes it

Beauty, it turns out, has a cost.

Available for the next 365 days on the first collaborative astrophotography platform.

💡 Tip: upload your own preview and see how your version stacks up against other subscribers' 😉

🗓️ Today's processing challenge:
#️⃣ SP_0218
📖 IC 59 (Gamma Cassiopeiae Nebula)
🌈 HaOIII + RGB
🌎 Remote - Sierra Remote Observatories, California, USA
🔭 Planewave CDK17 f6.5
⌛ 35h integration

Pass = unlimited master .fits to process 👉 spacetimepictures.com/datasets/SP_0218
🌌 Follow and enjoy our daily datasets.

Original astronomical data and processing by Martin Pugh Astrophotography

12/07/2026

🏷️ Gotta catch 'em all?

Here is IC 1284, a vibrant star-forming emission nebula drifting some 5,500 light-years away in Sagittarius, flanked by its two blue reflection companions. Not the flashiest object in the sky, not one you'll find on many bucket lists. And that, for a certain kind of astrophotographer, is exactly the appeal.

Because let's be honest, some of us are collectors. You start with the greatest hits, then one day you catch yourself checking which IC numbers you're still missing. The Index Catalogue holds 5,386 entries. We've got 108 of them in the SP catalogue right now.. not bad, but plenty left to hunt. 👀

Obsessive? Maybe a little. But there's real joy in the deep cuts: the overlooked, the underexposed, the ones nobody else is pointing at. IC 1284 is one of those, and today it's yours.

Available for the next 365 days on the first collaborative astrophotography platform.

💡 Tip: search by catalogue (e.g. IC) and start ticking them off, one dataset at a time 😉

🗓️ Today's processing challenge:
#️⃣ SP_0217
📖 IC 1284
🌈 LRGB
🌎 Remote - Obstech El Sauce, Chile
🔭 Planewave CDK17 f6.5
⌛ 23h20m integration

Pass = unlimited master .fits to process 👉 spacetimepictures.com/datasets/SP_0217
🌌 Follow and enjoy our daily datasets.

Original astronomical data and processing by Martin Pugh Astrophotography