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EarthSky’s October 14, 2026, community gallery gathers standout astrophotographs made during September, from emission nebulae and reflection clouds to spiral galaxies and the newly discovered supernova SN 2026aaiv. The images show what different workflows—smart telescopes, a backyard wide-field rig, narrow-band filters and long multi-night stacks—can reveal from ordinary home locations as well as darker sites.
What the September gallery contains
Curator Armando Caussade organizes the selection into diffuse nebulae, distant galaxies and a dedicated NGC 7331 section featuring SN 2026aaiv. The collection includes the Pleiades, WR134, the Western Veil Nebula (NGC 6960), the Wizard Nebula, the Heart and Soul nebulae (IC 1805 and IC 1848), Messier 74 and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31).
It is also a practical snapshot of current community astrophotography: some contributors used automated smart telescopes, while others built images from conventional long-exposure sessions, narrow-band data or many nights of integration.
Nebula photographs
Pleiades: blue reflection nebulosity
Muhammad Alaa photographed the Pleiades from Egypt with a smart telescope on September 15. His caption highlights the cluster’s blue reflection nebulosity—the dust around the young stars scattering their light—rather than treating the Pleiades as only a collection of bright points.
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WR134: a powerful Wolf–Rayet star and its surrounding nebulae
Ernest Jacobs captured nebulae around WR134 from Eden, New York, on September 6 with a backyard wide-field deep-sky imaging rig over three nights. WR134, also known as V1769 Cyg, is a Wolf–Rayet star: a massive, hot stellar core shedding material rapidly near the end of its life. Jacobs’ caption gives it a surface temperature of about 63,000 K and a luminosity roughly 400,000 times that of the Sun. The system lies in Cygnus, about 6,000 light-years away.
Western Veil Nebula: five nights on NGC 6960
Cody Sandusky used a smart telescope in Harrisburg, Illinois, to image NGC 6960 on September 15. The Western Veil project accumulated approximately 15 hours of integration across five nights from his backyard. That extended total helps reveal the extremely faint, filamentary remains of the supernova explosion that created the Veil complex.
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Wizard Nebula: what narrow-band filters change
Andy Dungan photographed the Wizard Nebula in Cepheus near Cotopaxi, Colorado, on September 3. He contrasted the result with an image made two years earlier that appeared as “basically a red blob.” Narrow-band filters isolated emission from specific gases, bringing out more structure and allowing a more distinctive color treatment. This is the gallery’s clearest example of how filter choice can change both the information recorded and the final appearance.
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Muhammad Alaa’s September 24 smart-telescope image from Assiut, Egypt, combines the Heart Nebula (IC 1805) and Soul Nebula (IC 1848), emission nebulae in Cassiopeia. He describes processing as challenging because hydrogen-alpha and oxygen III emissions had to be brought forward without sacrificing natural structure and fine detail.
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Galaxy photographs and the supernova section
Messier 74: a four-night spiral-galaxy stack
Catherine Hyde photographed the face-on spiral galaxy M74 in Pisces from Cambria, California, on September 19. Her dataset contained 134 five-minute exposures—2.5-minute? No: each exposure was 300 seconds, or five minutes—stacked over four nights for a little over 11 hours of total integration. Weather dictated the multi-night schedule, but combining the usable frames produced a deeper view of the galaxy’s arms and faint outer regions.
Andromeda from a garage roof
Jeremy Likness photographed M31 from Newport, Oregon, on September 10. His caption places Andromeda approximately 2.5 million light-years away and refers to its roughly one trillion stars. He also notes that a garage roof was enough: clear, dark local skies meant he did not need to travel to a remote observing site.
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NGC 7331 and SN 2026aaiv
Several contributors recorded NGC 7331 in Pegasus together with SN 2026aaiv. Captions identify the supernova as Type Ia and place its discovery on September 1, 2026, by ATLAS. NGC 7331 is about 45 million light-years away. Dominique Gering describes the event as a thermonuclear explosion involving a white dwarf accreting material from a neighboring star; the sudden bright point appeared on September 1. The repeated coverage by different photographers makes this section both an imaging comparison and a time-stamped record of a transient event.
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How the photographers’ approaches compare
| Target or section | Object class | Capture method | Processing or time investment | Setting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pleiades | Open cluster with reflection nebulosity | Smart telescope | Single-date capture, September 15 | Egypt |
| WR134 | Diffuse nebula around a Wolf–Rayet star | Backyard wide-field deep-sky rig | Three nights | Eden, New York |
| NGC 6960 | Supernova-remnant nebula | Smart telescope | Five nights; approximately 15 hours | Backyard in Harrisburg, Illinois |
| Wizard Nebula | Emission nebula | Telescope workflow with narrow-band filters | Narrow-band color and emission extraction | Near Cotopaxi, Colorado |
| Heart and Soul | Emission nebulae | Smart telescope | Hydrogen-alpha and oxygen III processing | Assiut, Egypt |
| Messier 74 | Spiral galaxy | Long-exposure imaging | 134 × 300-second frames; a little over 11 hours across four nights | Cambria, California |
| Andromeda | Spiral galaxy | Deep-sky imaging | Single-date capture, September 10 | Garage roof in Newport, Oregon |
| NGC 7331 with SN 2026aaiv | Spiral-galaxy host and transient supernova | Multiple contributor workflows | Images made around the September 1 discovery | Various locations |
What these images show about deep-sky technique
- Integration time matters: the Veil and M74 examples use five-night and four-night programs, respectively, to collect faint signal that a single short session would miss.
- Filters can separate physical emissions: narrow-band data helped the Wizard Nebula image distinguish more structure, while hydrogen-alpha and oxygen III processing shaped the Heart and Soul result.
- Automation lowers the entry barrier: smart telescopes produced several featured images without the captions naming a specific model.
- Location is not everything: contributors worked from backyards, a garage roof and a remote Colorado-area setting; darkness and clear weather can be more decisive than travel distance.
- Transient targets reward timing: SN 2026aaiv’s September 1 discovery made NGC 7331 an unusually time-sensitive subject for community imagers.
How to submit your own Earth or sky photo
- Prepare an image of an Earth or sky subject and keep the capture date, location and equipment notes.
- Write a caption that identifies the target and explains the exposure strategy, filters, stacking or processing that materially shaped the result.
- Submit the image through EarthSky Community Photos, the platform EarthSky uses for community contributions.
- Include enough technical and observing context for editors and readers to understand how the image was made; selection for a gallery is not guaranteed.
The September 2026 gallery demonstrates that “deep sky” is not one visual style. Nebula images emphasize gas and dust, galaxy projects depend on long integration and careful stacking, and supernova frames document a changing event. Together, they connect the finished pictures to the practical decisions—where to observe, how long to collect data and which wavelengths to isolate—that made them possible.
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