My latest capture of the Sunflower Galaxy - Messier 63 in Canes Venatici, 27 million light-years away. A flocculent spiral: two tightly wound main arms breaking apart into short, feathery segments. Two bonus galaxies hide in the field - UGC 8313, a tiny companion to the upper right, and UGC 8365, a background barred spiral at 69 million light-years in the lower left.

https://adfr.io/astro/20260423_m63

#astrodon #astrophotography #galaxy #messier63 #sunflowergalaxy

NGC 281 - the Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia. A return to a familiar object, this time with a new setup and considerably more integration time. In the Hubble palette (HSO), the dark Bok globules stand out with particular clarity - dense dust structures being eroded by the radiation pressure of the young cluster IC 1590, while possibly hiding new star formation deep within.

https://adfr.io/astro/20260407_ngc281

#Astrophotography #Narrowband #NGC281 #PacmanNebula #Cassiopeia #HSO #HubblePalette #astrodon

Past saturday, we finally opened up the planetarium in Chemnitz again, after nearly one year of closure - right in time for international astronomy day.

https://adfr.io/thoughts/20260331_planetarium_shines_again

Skywarden just got a framing assistant. Open any object, get a rotatable, draggable FOV overlay on a real sky survey image - sized to your exact optics and sensor.

Auto-rotates to best fit the object into your frame. For larger targets, it calculates the mosaic tile grid too.

Try it: https://skywarden.app
Changelog: https://adfr.io/projects/skywarden

#astrodon #astrophotography #astrophotographer #astronomy #indieDev #skywarden

The Leo Triplet - three spiral galaxies 35 million light-years away in Leo.

NGC 3628 appears perfectly edge-on, its dust lane and warped disk shaped by billions of years of tidal interaction. M65 and M66 complete the trio with asymmetric arms and disrupted structure.

https://adfr.io/astro/20260322_leo_triplet

#astrodon #astrophotography #astrophotographer #astrophoto #deepsky #galaxies #galaxy

The planetarium at Albert-Schweitzer-Oberschule Chemnitz is coming back to life. We're kicking things off with the Tag der Astronomie on 28 March – free planetarium shows, telescopes in the courtyard, and live views through the observatory. No tickets, no registration.

https://adfr.io/thoughts/20260319_the_planetarium_awakens

#Astrodon #Astronomie #Planetarium #Chemnitz #TagDerAstronomie

New Skywarden update v0.24 🎉

No more duplicates - objects now only appear once in the list but show all catalogue IDs.

Proper previews - finally, every object shows a nice preview image, thanks to CDS hips2fits and DSS2 survey.

Check it out at https://skywarden.app

#astrodon #astrophotography #astrophotographer #planning #app

M106 is one of those objects that rewards a closer look. What appears to be extra spiral arms is actually shock-heated gas pushed out of the galactic plane by jets from an active nucleus. This field also captures NGC 4217 edge-on, the interacting pair NGC 4231/4232, and several fainter neighbors.

https://adfr.io/astro/20260317_m106

#Astrodon #Astrophotography #M106 #NGC4258 #DeepSky #astrophoto

Skywarden and Theo are free and will stay that way.

I've been thinking about how to keep them sustainable - and ruled out ads, paywalls, and subscription models one by one. Instead, both apps will show a small, dismissible message asking for support. No restrictions, no difference between users.

The full reasoning: https://adfr.io/thoughts/20260316_no_ads_no_paywall_just_a_request

#Skywarden #Astrophotography #IndieDev #OpenWeb #astrodon #astrophotography