Dana Matson
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double-oh-3.bsky.social
Dana Matson
@double-oh-3.bsky.social
1.2K followers 140 following 200 posts
Astrophotography, ultimate frisbee, video production, plus some other things

Prints of some of my photos:
store.rupertstudios.com
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double-oh-3.bsky.social
Quick and dirty (literally) process of a project I'm working on. This could be a really cool image after I get more data, and new flats to get rid of the dirt in the image train.

#astrophotography
There's an arc of red representing hydrogen gas on the left side, and a splodge of blue, which is interstellar dust reflecting light from a star towards the top right. On the bottom right there is a dark circle, which is an artifact left from a bit of dust on one of the pieces of glass in my imaging train
November 19, 2025 at 4:19 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Space weather definitely happened last night west of Boston
Aurora borealis over some trees. The Aurora is a pink and green blur, with the most vivid pink in the bottom left, fading to green on the right
November 12, 2025 at 2:08 PM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Finally got enough data to be happy with this result. Over 55 hours of narrowband data, and some broadband data for the stars. I processed this using the Foraxx palette to get some orange color.

#Astrophotography #Supernova #Space
The main focus is a spiky arch of red and blue that is the remaining gas from a supernova which exploded over 13,000 years ago.
October 14, 2025 at 8:09 PM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Last year I gathered a lot of data on the Pacman Nebula, but never processed it in a way I was happy with. One of the big challenges with this nebula is that the surrounding hydrogen is much fainter than the main nebula.

#Astrophotography #Space #nebula #pacman

1/
A blue and red nebula, the center of which resembles Pac-Man with his mouth open. Meeting the center there is a lot of red gas that almost looks like flames emanating from the center of the nebula, which is bright, vivid blue.
September 6, 2025 at 4:49 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
My latest project is a combination of broadband and maintenance data in Cygnus. In the bottom are 2 reflection nebulae, and the top right is the propeller nebula.

#Astrophotography #Space #nebula
Red and orange clouds of gas mostly fill the frame. In the top right is an orange structure that resembles the propeller of an airplane. In the bottom left are 3 bright blue spots that are reflection nebulae. The whole image has a field of colorful stars.
August 30, 2025 at 3:37 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
It's been a while since I've posted one of my photos. This is still a work in progress, but it's coming along. This is a faint supernova remnant in Cygnus. I'm about 25 hours in, and I probably want to double it to bring out more details.

#astrophotography #supernova
The main focus is a spiky arch of red and blue that is the remaining gas from a supernova.
August 20, 2025 at 12:42 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
This was from a job last year, about 30 cables ranging from 5' to 200'
Dozens of cables, mostly black, red and blue, plugged into the back of a video switcher. It is all very chaotic.
May 13, 2025 at 12:19 PM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
First light from the Minicam8 Mono. Working on this I realized how much I need to learn LRGB processing, and I didn't do myself any favors by making it more complicated adding in Ha to the mix.

I'll look to add more data in the coming days as we go through Galaxy season.

#Astrophotography #mono
Two galaxies are visible. On the left is an oval, spiral galaxy, with two prominent arms. It has some spots of red, but otherwise the colors are a bit muddy. On the right is a galaxy we see from the edge, making it look just like a cigar, but with an explosion of red emitting from the middle.
April 18, 2025 at 4:52 PM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
I recognize that leaning tower
I'm the center of the frame a tower on the beach leans to the right at almost a 45 degree angle. The photo is angled so the tower looks vertical and everything else is tilted.
April 9, 2025 at 1:41 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
I was just reminded that this was a year ago today. We had some thin clouds where I was, but that didn't detract from the experience.

For this image, I came back to the same patch of sky about 6 months later to get the stars.

#eclipse #astrophotography
The sun's corona during a total solar eclipse. in the center is a dark circle, with white rays emitted from all sides. on the top left there is a ray that's bigger than the others and on the bottom, a couple that are slightly more prominent than those around them. On the bottom-right side of the moon a few orange solar flares are visible. The background has a few stars.
April 8, 2025 at 10:40 PM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
I'm happy to have gotten any photo of totality, given how most of the eclipse went.

#eclipse
March 14, 2025 at 4:16 PM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
As promised @weatherishappening.com my photon counter caught a glimpse between clouds just before the end of totality

#astrophotography #eclipse #moon
The moon during a total lunar eclipse. The moon has an orange tint, and is brighter on the top left and darker on the bottom right
March 14, 2025 at 8:07 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
A Song of Ice and Fire

Dreyer's Nebula lies just outside the HA region surrounding the Christmas Tree Cluster, and looks like it's fighting back the red. I really like this framing.

#Astrophotography #space
On the left side is a large region of red, that looks like it's expanding towards a smaller blue nebula on the right. On the right side there is also a bunch of grey dust, with some darker areas indicating dust clouds that aren't illuminated by any stars from our perspective. The entire region has many colorful stars.
March 6, 2025 at 1:47 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
After a couple years I returned to the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae to add a bunch of data, including HA from a dual narrowband filter. I ended up with about 40 hours total of data included in this image.

#Astrophotography #Space
The Horsehead Nebula is a dark cloud in front of a red cloud of dust that has some almost vertical striations above the Horsehead and a horizontal line that's brighter and goes behind the middle of the Horsehead. The Flame Nebula is to the left of the Horsehead and rotated about 90 degrees counterclockwise. It looks like a flame, but instead of the flames going up, they radiate from a point. The nebula is mostly orange, with a little bit of blue and a dark structure that runs through it, like the trunk and branches of a tree. Below the Horsehead and Flame there is a lot of brown dust.
February 26, 2025 at 3:00 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Well, I have no new photos to share because I'm in the middle of several projects, but here's one of my favorites from a couple years ago. The Pleiades star cluster is one of the brightest and best-known in the night sky.

#Astrophotography #Space
The Pleiades star cluster is one of the brightest clusters in the night sky. The four brightest stars are in the shape of a diamond in the center of the image, with a pair of bright stars below them. All the brightest stars are surrounded by blue nebulosity in sweeping strands. Father out there is some gray and brown dust.
February 18, 2025 at 4:04 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Still one of my favorites a couple years later. 11 hours of broadband data of the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae from late 2022. Perhaps this is the year I'll gather more data for a new version.

#Astrophotography
The Horsehead Nebula is a dark cloud in front of a red cloud of dust that has some almost vertical striations above the Horsehead and a horizontal line that's brighter and goes behind the middle of the Horsehead. The Flame Nebula is to the left of the Horsehead and rotated about 90 degrees counterclockwise. It looks like a flame, but instead of the flames going up, they radiate from a point. The nebula is mostly orange, with a little bit of blue and a dark structure that runs through it, like the trunk and branches of a tree.
January 26, 2025 at 1:12 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Adding a couple objects to my personal Messier Catalog. These are two of three galaxies in Leo's Triplet. The missing one is the Hamburger Galaxy, but it wouldn't fit in my field of view with this setup. I've been gathering data for this for a couple of months.

#Astro #Astrophotography #Space
Two galaxies, on the left is M65, a fairly ordinary spiral galaxy that we see almost edge on, so it shows up as a skinny oval. On the right is M66, which has two prominent arms that speak out from the middle, and two faint curved arms protruding from the bottom.
January 24, 2025 at 11:25 PM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Mars emerges from occultation. Welcome back to view. If I figure out how to process this sequence, I'll post that later.

#Astrophotography
January 14, 2025 at 5:52 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Latest Option: MultiscaleGradientCorrection
I had to adjust one of the very few options in order to get a good result, but I think MGC handled avery part of this image better than the other tools.
The left side of the image is dominated by an arc of red nebulosity, on the right is a nebula that is blue and white in two parts, with dark brown dust cutting through the middle.
December 24, 2024 at 4:33 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Automatic DBE uses statistics fro the image to decide where to place control points for DynamicBackgroundExtraction. This is another great tool, but the biggest issue I had was actually brighter than much of the signal, which statistically is hard to differentiate.
The left side of the image is dominated by an arc of red nebulosity, on the right is a nebula that is blue and white in two parts, with dark brown dust cutting through the middle. There is also a blue and green splotch near the nebula, which shouldn't be there.
December 24, 2024 at 4:33 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
First Option: GraXpert
The developer of GraXpert has made many improvements over the last year, so I tried it again. Unfortunately, the result was not much better. GraXpert handles the reflection issue better than others, but also gets rid of a large amount of the signal from Barnard's Loop.
The left side of the image has some red nebulosity, but it is broken by many dark areas of empty space, on the right is a nebula that is blue and white in two parts, with dark brown dust cutting through the middle.
December 24, 2024 at 4:33 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Rewind to last year, I had gathered quite a bit of data for this image and started stacking it. After seeing the final stack and running a linear background extraction, there was a particularly bad spot near M78.
The left side of the image is dominated by an arc of red nebulosity, on the right is a nebula that is blue and white in two parts, with dark brown dust cutting through the middle. There is also a blue and green splotch near the nebula, which shouldn't be there.
December 24, 2024 at 4:33 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
Casper the Friendly Ghost and part of Barnard's Loop. The data for this image is from last year, but I never finished processing it, because there was a big internal reflection that caused a crazy gradient that I couldn't eliminate.

MGC in Pixinsight changed that. 🧵

#Astrophotography
The left side of the image is dominated by an arc of red nebulosity, on the right is a nebula that is blue and white in two parts, with dark brown dust cutting through the middle.
December 24, 2024 at 4:33 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
On the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, I'm sharing an image I took over a couple nights in October, but wasn't able to process in a way I was happy with until Pixinsight added Multiscale Gradient Correction.

This is about 3 hours with the Rokinon 135 at f/2.

#Astrophotography
A gray nebula that resembles the profile of a stereotypical witch is on the left third facing right towards a bright star. Beyond the start is the edge of a red nebula that extends beyond the right side of the frame.
December 22, 2024 at 3:47 AM
double-oh-3.bsky.social
New #Pixinsight update just dropped, and it includes Multiscale Gradient Correction. I'm so excited for this, because gradients can give me a lot of trouble, especially for broadband images.

#Astrophotography
MultiscaleGradientCorrection (MGC) The new MultiscaleGradientCorrection process (MGC) is a high-performance, highly accurate implementation of the MGC algorithm created by Vicent Peris with significant improvements. MGC generates a gradient model by comparing statistically compatible, large-scale structures between its target image and a gradient-free reference image. The MGC reference can be either a user-provided image or synthesized with data retrieved from a MARS database.
December 20, 2024 at 10:22 PM