Lower's Nebula (Don Walters)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Orion (Ori)

Powered byPixInsight

Lower's Nebula

Powered byPixInsight

Lower's Nebula

Discovered by Howard and Charles Lower, father and son astronomers, in 1939 using a Schmidt camera that had only been invented just a few short years earlier. This object had much significance for me, since I used to do astrophotography with my dad back in the 80s and 90s.

This is my first tri-color target with my new SII filter. This version was done to accentuate the greens using SHO combination. This version being so heavy in the green is much less realistic but the contrast was awesome and I really liked it. No artificial saturation was done at all. Just noise control and contrast adjustments.

I also had a major breakthrough in my focus motor. Turns out, there is significant backlash in the focuser gears. I first noticed it when I was getting HFR somewhere in the 3-4" range, but I could rack out the focuser by about .25mm and get HFRs in the 1.8-2.4 range. So I knew something was wrong. Turns out, SGP already has a nice function to cover this. Under Focuser, you can click on the "other" button and there are more parameters you can use for backlash. I put in a value of 250 microns in the "out" direction, and now I'm getting 1.8-2.4 HFR on every shot! This means my focus is much more accurate and I get to keep more of my frames. I would routinely have to throw away about 1/2 to 1/3 of my frames because of poor HFR. Now I'm keeping about 90% of them!

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1462517
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Lower's Nebula

Lower's Nebula

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Lower's Nebula

Lower's Nebula

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information