Orion nebula with bad flats (Zeb Németh)

Orion nebula with bad flats

"Abysmal" stars; a "wrong" reducer (Meade's SCT .63) on an already fast and cheap achro (SK15075), and a "banal" subject...

But my girlfriend convinced me, a perfectionist always scared of even starting a project because I overthink things, to give it some exposure time anyway.

A cherry on top, the flats were a wreck; I think I accidentally had either a washing line in view, or light leaked through someplace else during the day. Either way, the banding and shifted dust-mote are blatantly present.

Lots of dust and noise - but hey, our very own eyes aren't immune to noise. The swirl of red, blue and green grains is something I am aware of most of the time I try to view anything with precision. So in this photograph, I let the noise prevail a little, and instead of black-clipping the noise, dust around the bright nebula remains visible. I like the little protrusion in the lower center. Noise is a fact of measuring signal.

f/3.3 rendered already unexpectedly bright 40 second subexposures - the closest focal lengths I had experienced before were either 1260/f6.3 or 200/f2.8, so 472/3.3 was a blast.

A normative failure, in many ways. But my girlfriend immediately wanted the picture as her phone background. As did I. Who knew.

The stars actually point towards the cradle, so that's a nice visual effect. Draws you in, kinda.
I'll be photographing some more areas of the sky using this setup before hurrying after the APO-norms.

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.

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