I publish the raw data from my astrophotography sessions for one simple reason:
good data deserves to live longer than a single final JPEG.

Every frame carries far more information than any processed image ever will. Sometimes a different workflow reveals details I didn’t notice; sometimes someone simply wants to experiment, learn, or compare their processing to mine — and I see no point in keeping that data locked away on my drive.

Each archive contains the full raw dataset from a single imaging session, dedicated to one target and one date.
These are not tiny demo files — expect several gigabytes per archive. That’s just the reality of deep-sky data.

What’s inside each archive

The structure is intentionally minimal:

lights/
All raw light frames from the session. These are what you’ll use to re-stack and reprocess.

master_dark.fit
A master dark built from my dark library for that session’s exposure and temperature.

biased_master_flat.fit
A master bias (or super-bias) used to pre-correct my flats.
Since my flats already have bias removed, the raw flats and bias frames are not included.

No bloat. No clutter. Just the essential files needed to rebuild a clean stack from scratch.

How you can use this data

You can:

– re-stack the lights using Siril, PixInsight, ASTAP, DSS, anything
– apply the provided master dark & bias as you prefer
– experiment with different calibration workflows
– explore noise patterns, gradients, and colour data from a real OSC setup
– test processing tutorials or develop your own workflow

If you achieve a better result — share it with me, I’d genuinely enjoy seeing it.

License

All datasets are released under Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).

This means:

✔ you may download
✔ you may reprocess
✔ you may publish your final result
✔ you must credit the source
✘ you may not use the data commercially

Here’s a list of publications that include downloadable raw data: