Southern Sky OPAL aka NGC6188 Dragons of Ara (robonrome)

Southern Sky OPAL aka NGC6188 Dragons of Ara

Another lengthy absence since my last image, but this time down to equipment "health" issues rather than my own.

Started some 6 weeks ago with my camera not cooling down despite it being Winter here - eventually determined the fan needed replacing...sent away received and installed that, but then all of a sudden my Eagle control unit failed... another few weeks to get that sorted out, but phew finally everything back in service.

I've pictured this target before, but this time imaged at native F6 on my APM LZOS 130 and tried a different orientation. I wanted to go deep and imaged over 6 nights, but half of the frames were ruined by heavy smoke from bush back-firing in the area... left me with 20hours of SHO.

Stacked and basic process in APP then separate S, H and O combined and processed in Startools... both outputs into PS and made starless then combined to taste and further post processed in PS (selective colour enhance and contrast, sharpening) before re-adding stars.

Southern Hemisphere Astro

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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	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7834825
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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