Messier 78 and a Host of Other Nebulae (Alex Woronow)

Messier 78 and a Host of Other Nebulae

Messier 78 and a Host of Other Nebulae

OTA: 16" f/3.7 Dream Aerospace Sys Astrograph
Camera: FLI Proline 16803
Observatory: Insight Obs., Utah

Exposures:
R: 19 x 300 sec
G: 17 x 300
B: 20 x 300
H: x 600 sec (5nm)
Total Exposure time used: 5.8 hours.
Image Width: 1.3 degrees

Processing Tools:
1.   Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz Studio, Topaz Denoise, Topaz Gigapixel, Aurora HDR, Luminar Neo, 3DLUT Creator
2.   Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, Normalize Scale Gradient
3.   My Scripts and Processes: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool, Color Augmentation

Target Description:
Messier 78 is the upper reflection nebula in this image. The ensemble of clouds is part of the Orion B Molecular cloud complex. Several young T-Tauri and Herbig-Haro stars lie in the center of M 78 and cause most of the light from the blue reflection nebula.

Processing Description:
As with virtually all of my images over the last year or so, the narrowband images are mapped into true color and added to the RGB when available. The new thing beginning with this image was a PixelMath code that differentially enhances the color of images based on whether they dominate a pixel or not. It made the blues more forward and the reds less mono-color, as adding Ha to the red channel can do.

Alex Woronow

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
Artificial satellite

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 failed
Started	...
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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