Nils Harnischmacher

I'm Nils Harnischmacher, and I photograph the night sky from Münster, Germany – from my own small observatory, the New Horizons Observatory.

My favourite targets are large emission nebulae and dark clouds: regions where stars are born and where their radiation makes the surrounding gas glow. The sky over Münster never gets truly dark, so I work almost exclusively with narrowband filters there. They only pass the light of hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur and keep the contrast even with city lights and the Moon.

For small targets such as planetary nebulae and galaxies I also use a remote telescope at Oukaïmeden in Morocco's Atlas Mountains. It sits at about 2,700 m under one of the darkest skies within reach of Europe.

My images rarely come from a single night. Usually I collect many hours of exposure over weeks or months, sometimes with two telescopes. Every night is checked, every single frame graded, and only the good ones go into the stack. The processing is documented step by step as well – which is why every image comes with its full acquisition details and a short description of the object.

I also publish my images on AstroBin. Questions, comments or just a chat are always welcome – feel free to send me an e-mail.