M64 Black Eye Galaxy #5 (Molly Wakeling)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com) · Contains: Black Eye Galaxy · Black-eye galaxy · Evil Eye Galaxy · M 64 · NGC 4826 · PGC 140038 · PGC 1649202 · PGC 1651721 · PGC 1652914 · PGC 1653925 · PGC 1654258 · PGC 1654945 · PGC 1655417 · PGC 1656904 · PGC 1656969 · PGC 1657062 · PGC 1657695 · PGC 1659322 · PGC 1659632

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M64 Black Eye Galaxy #5

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M64 Black Eye Galaxy #5

Another image already -- the Black Eye Galaxy!
I've had this dataset for a while, and finally got around to processing it. It's been a busy summer in classes!
The Black Eye Galaxy, also well-known as M64, is a really interesting galaxy in the galaxy-rich constellation of Coma Berenices. It's about 17.3 million lightyears away.

The "black eye" look comes from a very dark band of dust around its bright center. One of the really interesting aspects of M64 is that the central region rotates in the opposite direction as the outer halo! It's thought that this may be caused by a merger with another nearby galaxy that was in a retrograde orbit around M64, or possibly from accreting clouds of gas from the intergalactic medium. The core has a lot of rich detail that I couldn't get with my telescope, but others have managed it -- the Hubble image of M64's core is particularly incredible.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4959121
PixInsight job	47ZUIH0J26DQPUZZQ2O3D76TSYDUSZWN
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	12h56m43s.460
RA (top/left)	12h55m08s.630
RA (top/right)	12h58m25s.906
RA (bottom/right)	12h58m17s.779
RA (bottom/left)	12h54m59s.999

Dec (center)	+21°41′39″.50
Dec (top/left)	+21°23′17″.38
Dec (top/right)	+21°25′57″.95
Dec (bottom/right)	+21°59′57″.12
Dec (bottom/left)	+21°57′18″.24

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M64 Black Eye Galaxy #5

M64 Black Eye Galaxy #5

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M64 Black Eye Galaxy #5

M64 Black Eye Galaxy #5

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