At the core of Andromeda (Tom Gray)

At the core of Andromeda

At last a prolonged clear, moonless sky to lose myself in the cosmos. I had decided to image M31 using my ‘widefield’ set up, DSI IIIM/210mm camera lens riding on top of my LX5 fork mount, but it seemed a waste just to piggyback, so decided to also try imaging the core of M31 using my DSI II OSC camera at f3. Envisage handled both cameras and different exposures without ‘blinking’.

Despite a polar drift the previous night, my alignment was off, resulting in too many declination corrections, nevertheless PHD worked hard to maintain an RMS ~1”. This resulted in some noise streaking in this image. I managed to collect around 100 x 60s exposures of the core, which were automatically stacked and aligned in Envisage, before processing in Startools. I used default settings with just a little gamma correction to brighten the image.

Despite the obvious artefacts, including a persistent noise band (damaged array?) across the top of the image, I am pleased that some detail in the dust lanes and core emerged, given the low resolution of this image. I’m hoping my piggyback image will yield my first proper widefield LRGB composition of this galactic wonder.

Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
UK Astro-Imaging
The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)

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	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3858960
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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