Panagiotis Xipteras

Panagiotis Xipteras

@xipteras.com

Astro & Nature Photography | Storyteller: Stars, Myths & Deep Time | Tech & AI Adopter | Equipment Reviewer | Earth🌿 & Space Advocate | No Politics | Website: https://www.xipteras.com

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☀️ Oct 27, 2026: Sun in Virgo and almost spotless today, just one tiny speck near the lower edge in my shot. AR4560 has already rotated out of view. ⛔️ Never look at the Sun without a certified solar filter! 📷 Handheld, Sony A7RV, 70-200mm f/4 + 2x TC, Baader AstroSolar™. #solarphotography

Midday in late October, and the sun barely clears 29°. That low light turns Solitude Palace to gold against a deep blue sky. Duke Carl Eugen built it in the 1760s as his retreat above Stuttgart. Which season gives you your best light?📷 #SolitudePalace #Stuttgart #LeicaM8 www.schloss-solitude.de/en/

The way is the target, so my main telescope still carries a Telrad, Steve Kufeld's late-1970s design with three red rings of 4°, 2° and ½°, while a spiral-bound atlas lies open beside it and I find every faint object by hand. CS /px 24.10.2026 #Telrad #telescope

✨🔭 Capella climbing out of the north-eastern haze in the evening, and with it #Auriga brings back the first clusters of the winter sky. M38 and the little NGC 1907 just below, M36 further down, compact and blue, both swimming in so many Milky Way stars that the eye has to search for them. #stars

☀️ Oct 22: the Sun is in Virgo and shows two spot groups today, AR4557 and AR4560. Big AR4551 just slipped around the edge, so it's a calm disk. ⛔️ Never look at the Sun without a proper solar filter! 📷 Handheld, Sony A7RV, 70-200mm f/4, 2x TC, Baader AstroSolar™ #solarphotography

🌌 The sky is still bleeding blue when you bend to the eyepiece. ✨🔭 Red light at your feet. The Big Dipper overhead. Five of its stars are a family that has travelled together since long before us. You look past all of them, into the dark. You don’t say a word. #NightSky #StarParty #telescope

🌌 The Hercules Cluster, Abell 2151, lies about 500 million light-years away in the constellation Hercules, a gathering of roughly two hundred galaxies held together by gravity, hot X-ray gas and the scaffolding of dark matter. #astrophotography

🌔 Oct 19, 2026: Moon in Capricornus, about 397,500 km away and 61% lit. Through a telescope, Plato, Tycho and Clavius look crisp along the shadow line. Copernicus sits right at the edge, waiting for its sunrise. Handheld, Sony A7RV + 70-200mm f/4 + 2x TC. #Moonphase

For as long as there have been people, they have wanted to know where they stand. Toward Scorpius and Sagittarius the Milky Way stops being a faint band and ... #DeepTime #MilkyWay #CanaryIslands #NightSky www.xipteras.com/Astronomy/Co... (click ℹ️)

xipteras.comSco and Sgt🌌 At the Edge of the World For as long as there have been people, they have wanted to know where they stand. Toward Scorpius and Sagittarius the Milky Way stops being a faint band and turns into stru...

The Dumbbell Nebula (M27), is a bright planetary nebula in Vulpecula, about 1,360 light-years away from us. Its dumbbell shape, created by the remnants of a red giant star shedding its outer layers, is a prime example of the fate of stars like our Sun. #Astrophotography

A fish swims at the edge of Cassiopeia, 7,000 light-years out, lit by one blue O-star in a cluster only a few million years old. 🔭 This is the Fishhead Nebula (IC1795). #astrophotography

🤩 Flashback 24.4.26: Venus meets the Pleiades. 🦋✨ -- Avalon Linear telescope mount, Sony A7CR camera, Sony 85mm 1.4 GM II lens, 10s, f/1.4, ISO100, cropped. #nightsky #planets #astrophotography

✨🔭 Three degrees north of the little Arrow, Sagitta, a pale apple core floats in a river of Milky Way #stars, too faint for the eye yet already there in binoculars. It died quietly, without exploding, and has spent thousands of years breathing its outer layers into space. #astrophotography

The Pleiades, also known as Messier 45, is a vast cluster of stars in the night sky. If you’d like to see it live tonight binoculars are a good choice. #astrophotography

An apple core of glowing gas in the Little Fox: M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, 1,360 light-years away. A Sun-like star shed its outer layers here, and the white dwarf left behind still lights the shell at 85,000 K. 2 h 28 min with my Vespera II telescope on the rooftop, no filter. #M27 #astrophotography

⭕🔭👀 A tiny red smoke ring hidden in the Swan: NGC 6894, the Little Ring Nebula, last breath of a Sun-like star 5,400 light-years away. Its light left when Uruk's scribes first wrote on clay. #NGC6894 #astrophotography

🔵 The blue haze around the Seven Sisters was long taken for the dust they were born from, but the stars are simply drifting through an unrelated cloud, and their light combs it into the fine streaks you see around the brightest of them. #Pleiades #astrophotography #stars

The Pleiades from my rooftop with my telescope, 6 Oct 2026 ✨ Their light left around 1582, the year the new Gregorian calendar skipped 5 to 14 October. The stars themselves are about 100 million years old, born while dinosaurs walked the Earth. Clear skies! #Pleiades #astrophotography

Others put solar panels on the roof and wait for the bill. The robotic telescope on my roof waits for 1,300-year-old light from M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, the glowing last breath of a Sun-like star. Raw live view tonight, final photo next. #DumbbellNebula #astrophotography

✨🔭 NGC 6791 is one of the most scientifically valuable open star clusters in our galaxy. Located in the constellation of Lyra, it lies approximately 13,300 light-years from our planet and has an apparent magnitude of 9,5. #summersky #stars

If you ask why my follower count will never reach six figures, I'll tell you. I don't feed the algorithm. I post deep-sky light, old myths and Deep Time, no politics, no drama, no engagement farming. I'd rather share the #Bluesky with 2K of you who slow down to look than with a million thumbs. 🫂

☀️ Oct 4, 2026, the Sun is in Virgo. One spot group hugging the edge, a smaller one halfway in, a faint pair near the middle. Cycle 25 is winding down, so I'll take every freckle I get.😂 ⛔️ Certified solar filter only! 📷 Handheld, A7RV, 70-200mm f/4 + 2x TC, Baader AstroSolar™ #solarphotography

The Moon over the clouds. Image take at 10300m ASL over Morocco by Panagiotis Xipteras with a Sony A7V camera and a Sony 50mm 1.2 GM lens. #lunarphotography #moon #cloudscape #moonphoto

☀️ Oct 3: Sun in Virgo. A small spot cluster low left, two lone spots, that's it, Cycle 25 is winding down. ⛔️ Only ever with a certified solar filter! 📷 Handheld, Sony A7RV, 70-200mm f/4 + 2x TC, Baader AstroSolar™ #solarphotography

🌖 Oct 3, 2026: 57% of the Moon lit, high in Gemini, 369,700 km away. Shot handheld at 1 am (A7RV, 70-200 f/4 + 2x). Last quarter lands at 3:25 pm CEST. Along the shadow line Ptolemaeus and Arzachel pop in a small scope, with Copernicus, Plato and Tycho easy too. #Moonphase

The light from M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, left its stars about 2.7 million years ago, when the earliest members of our genus lived in East Africa and northern ice sheets began to grow. Some of its blue giants may no longer exist. #M33 #galexies

🌖 Oct 1: Waning gibbous in Taurus, 79% lit and about 369,600 km away, close to perigee. She's parked under 3° from the Pleiades tonight. On the shadow edge, Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina pop in a scope, and Tycho's rays are hard to miss. Handheld, Sony A7RV, 70-200 f/4, 2x TC. #Moonphase

A cold shadow of dust 3.5 light-years tall, backlit by hydrogen, with the Flame Nebula burning beside Alnitak. Horsehead and Flame in Orion, 1,375 light-years away, shot in Hα with my NP127is and QSI683. Their light left around 650 AD. #HorseheadNebula #Astrophotography

☀️ Sept 29: the Sun is in Virgo and almost blank today. Just one small spot pair, each speck roughly Earth-sized. ⛔️ Never look at the Sun without a certified solar filter. Eye damage is permanent. 📷 Handheld, Sony A7RV, 70-200mm f/4 + 2x TC, Baader AstroSolar™ #solarphotography

🌖 Sept 28: 94% lit, drifting through Aries about 372,600 km away and closing in on Thursday's perigee. In a telescope, watch the shadow edge slice through Mare Crisium while Tycho and Copernicus spray their rays across the face. Handheld tonight: A7RV, 70-200 f/4, 2x TC. #Moonphase