M51 The Beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy (John Hayes)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: IC 4278 · M 51 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · Whirlpool galaxy

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M51 The Beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy

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M51 The Beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy

It's amazing to think that the photons in this image spent about 23 million years traveling unimpeded through space before crashing into my camera sensor! This data was taken over about two weeks on four pretty good nights. This is a bright and relatively easy galaxy to photograph but a hard one to process because of the combination of fine detail, subtle colors, and faint outer areas. I struggled with it but I've finally hit a point where I need to set it free and to see how you like it. C&C always welcome.

John

Ver A-D: Initial PS processing.

Ver E: I was never happy with my original processing so I took some time to learn some new techniques to better control noise, improve the Ha blending, and to control the star shapes. I still have a long way to go but I think this last version is a bit better on all counts. I'd like to know if I got it right so C&C is certainly welcome!

Ver F: I've still been trying to figure out proper color calibration and this latest version has been fully processed with PixInsight. I think that I've finally got a handle on the way to get the balance right! This latest version is straight out of the camera with no Ha data overlaid.

Ver G: I've been trying to develop better ways to handle star fields and I couldn't resist trying to clean up the background stars a bit in this image. I softened and shrunk them a bit.

Ver H: Cleans up the core details and a few other minor issues.

Ver I: Tweaked the color by a small amount

OK...I think that it's done!

Cloudy Nights

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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	932185
PixInsight job	HEPO7ZJZ379T2CMHQ87S1T4RFUCIGW5O
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	13h29m52s.357
RA (top/left)	13h31m19s.863
RA (top/right)	13h29m45s.934
RA (bottom/right)	13h28m24s.799
RA (bottom/left)	13h29m58s.774

Dec (center)	+47°11′44″.70
Dec (top/left)	+47°07′26″.33
Dec (top/right)	+47°27′09″.78
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°15′57″.86
Dec (bottom/left)	+46°56′19″.34

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M51 The Beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy

M51 The Beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy

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M51 The Beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy

M51 The Beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy

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