M82 | Trying to make the best of challenging data (Kevin Morefield)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: Cigar Galaxy · M 82 · NGC 3034

Powered byPixInsight

M82 | Trying to make the best of challenging data

Powered byPixInsight

M82 | Trying to make the best of challenging data

M82 has some incredible details that really want good resolution. But in the Sierras good seeing is fleeting in Winter so I had to sort through masses of data to get enough decent subs. I have 648 subs in my M82 folder from 2019 to 2022, the average exposure time is around 10 minutes so over 100 hours to start. But since I cull subs on the capture computer before downloading to the processing computer, I likely shot more than double that amount.

I really can't be sure how much actually got into this image becuase I layered new data over old as better came in. And, in the case of the Luminance, it is a blend of a smaller amount of sharp data in the highlights and all of the data in the shadows. But I'll attempt to guess for the official stats on the post.

By last season I had the color pretty much where I wanted it so this season I focused on getting sharp Luminance. That prepared Luminance was laid over the prior full color image in Photoshop as a Luminance layer. Looking back at the RGB data, it ranged from 2.4" to 4". The Ha was in a similar range, though I likely did some selection down to below 3". The sharpest Luminance, which is what you see in the galaxy core, is all below 2.3" - probably averaging around 2".

I'm particulaly interested in the objects in the upper right that look like distant red shifted galaxies. These continue on out of the FOV as well. They seem to line up with the faint Ha that trails from the galaxy core upward in the image. I suspect these are galaxies but wonder if they could be old globulars related to M82? Any one have info on these?

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	5465487
PixInsight job	G8C39I6ZM2LR3WH1SM7ZFGD1TOL7WUVX
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	09h55m18s.229
RA (top/left)	09h58m10s.863
RA (top/right)	09h52m30s.569
RA (bottom/right)	09h52m28s.651
RA (bottom/left)	09h58m03s.233

Dec (center)	+69°42′49″.82
Dec (top/left)	+69°53′10″.24
Dec (top/right)	+69°53′45″.18
Dec (bottom/right)	+69°32′18″.29
Dec (bottom/left)	+69°31′44″.38

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M82 | Trying to make the best of challenging data

M82 | Trying to make the best of challenging data

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Acquired at

Sky plot

Histogram

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M82 | Trying to make the best of challenging data

M82 | Trying to make the best of challenging data

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Acquired at

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