Messier 106: Revisiting a Challenging Galaxy (Sky Story)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 106 · NGC 4248 · NGC 4258

Powered byPixInsight

Messier 106: Revisiting a Challenging Galaxy

Powered byPixInsight

Messier 106: Revisiting a Challenging Galaxy

Messier 106 is a beautiful galaxy, but it proved to be very challenging, even from the very low Bortle area where I live in the Canadian backwoods. There was a nearly full moon the night I shot this, so the moon's gradient had to be extracted, something I prefer to do without gradient extraction tools since I find such tools often remove far too much information. The galaxy also portrays a great deal of detail that is both revealed and concealed by various degrees of histogram stretching. Stretch a bit too little and lose the delicate gas structure that surrounds the disc. Stretch a bit too much and blow out structure within the galactic core. My first attempt at portraying everything in the galaxy (can be seen in an earlier upload) resulted in an image in which I felt the galactic core was over illuminated, so the fine structure was lost, and the galactic main structure and the neighboring galaxy looked painted onto the canvas of space. This was a result of my initial hurried stubbornness in trying to reveal the delicate ring-like cloud structure around the outer disc.

I wasn't terribly happy with the original outcome. I wanted an image that portrayed all the information I had recorded in a way that looked more natural and pleasing to the eye. To create this version, I reprocessed the same masters, subdividing the information into many separate layers in order to emphasize the structure within each layer. The signal of each layer was improved then selectively composited to the layer beneath, kind of like folding light back on itself, to reach this final outcome.

I want to spend more time on this galaxy, capturing more L and Ha information. The galaxy has two anomalous arms which will require capturing a lot more signal to reveal 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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9846898
PixInsight job	Z9LYA6QSEO0837X5UYQEABRVL2U6Z89P
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h18m25s.151
RA (top/left)	12h19m51s.591
RA (top/right)	12h17m00s.906
RA (bottom/right)	12h16m59s.999
RA (bottom/left)	12h19m48s.699

Dec (center)	+47°18′25″.23
Dec (top/left)	+47°32′37″.26
Dec (top/right)	+47°32′58″.90
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°04′09″.27
Dec (bottom/left)	+47°03′48″.13

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Messier 106: Revisiting a Challenging Galaxy

Messier 106: Revisiting a Challenging Galaxy

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Messier 106: Revisiting a Challenging Galaxy

Messier 106: Revisiting a Challenging Galaxy

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