M74 The Phantom Galaxy (Michael Feigenbaum)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Pisces (Psc) · Contains: M 74 · MQ J013608.80+154359.4 · MQ J013609.08+154239.7 · MQ J013612.34+154519.8 · MQ J013612.45+155239.7 · MQ J013615.30+154341.7 · MQ J013619.24+153952.7 · MQ J013621.56+153542.6 · MQ J013623.86+154513.0 · MQ J013625.54+154857.7 · MQ J013625.76+153353.5 · MQ J013627.74+154753.5 · MQ J013635.31+154227.3 · MQ J013636.21+154557.4 · MQ J013637.70+154740.6 · MQ J013642.66+154418.5 · MQ J013647.14+155744.8 · MQ J013648.51+154259.7 · MQ J013650.87+155331.7 · MQ J013651.10+154546.3 · MQ J013657.31+153702.3 · MQ J013659.14+155525.0 · MQ J013659.61+154015.6 · MQ J013700.10+154516.9 · MQ J013704.24+155041.7 · MQ J013713.59+153515.4 · MQ J013713.86+154916.9 · MQ J013729.23+154612.4 · NGC 628 · PGC 138413 · And 20 more.

Powered byPixInsight

M74 The Phantom Galaxy

Powered byPixInsight

M74 The Phantom Galaxy

Here we have a crack at M74 The Phantom Galaxy in Pisces. This one is a classic face-on grand design spiral lying about 30 million light years away. M74 appears to be just slightly smaller than our Milky Way and contains about 100 billion stars. There are a lot of star forming regions, the origins of which are thought to be because of interactions with neighboring galaxies.

Imaging this was interesting as this is a rather low surface brightness object. My strategy was to do a lot of luminance integration to try to capture as much of the faint stuff as I could and do the RGB to apply the color. I finished it with an evening of Hα integrations to try to highlight the star forming regions in the arms of the galaxy.

Anyway, I was quite pleased with the outcome of this project and have learned a bit more about stretching from the linear which I have come to believe is a lot more important to the final image than I had ever thought. I also tried to be very conservative in the application of the Hα data so as not to overwhelm the image with that and cause it to look unnatural.

I also did not do much in the way of star reduction and I really tried to preserve as much of the background stuff as I could by keeping NR to a minimum. As a result, I think I caught a good number of apparently very distant galaxies that don't show up in the advance plate solving. So that kind made me happy too.

I hope you like this one and as always, comments and criticism welcome!

CS and good health...

Original
W
Final
X

X

Description: re-process with GHS and continuum subtraction

Uploaded: ...

Arizona Astrophotographers
Cloudy Nights
AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum

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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7097506
PixInsight job	JR5QVD4HJCH4CWITMQ3MK5VVT58HKR1U
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	01h36m42s.659
RA (top/left)	01h35m57s.929
RA (top/right)	01h35m46s.914
RA (bottom/right)	01h37m27s.328
RA (bottom/left)	01h37m38s.547

Dec (center)	+15°47′03″.90
Dec (top/left)	+16°03′49″.22
Dec (top/right)	+15°32′19″.17
Dec (bottom/right)	+15°30′16″.21
Dec (bottom/left)	+16°01′45″.69

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M74 The Phantom Galaxy

M74 The Phantom Galaxy

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

X

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M74 The Phantom Galaxy

M74 The Phantom Galaxy

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

X

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

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?

Delete this revision?

Delete this revision?

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