NGC4438 - The Eyes (Phil Montgomery)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: NGC 4435 · NGC 4438

Powered byPixInsight

NGC4438 - The Eyes

Powered byPixInsight

NGC4438 - The Eyes

The Eyes are approximately 50 million light-years away and are 100,000 light-years apart. The Eyes – comes from the similarity between the cores of this pair of galaxies. They look like two white ovals, similar to a pair of eyes glowing in the dark when viewed in a telescope. The larger of these two galaxies is called NGC 4438 (on the right of this image), and it was once a spiral galaxy but is thought to have become deformed by collisions with other galaxies in the last few hundred million years. NGC 4438 has a lane of obscuring dust visible just outside its nucleus, young stars can be seen outside of its center, and gas extends almost to the edges of the image. The other galaxy (on the leftt) is known as NGC 4435. It seems to be almost devoid of gas and dust.

These were taken during December 2022 and January 2023 from my backyard between one of the rainest winters we've had.

The first revision used my Pixinsight SubframeSelector with my standard weight equation but limited to a FWHM of 2.1 for all filters. This resulted in 19 hrs of integrated data.
The second revision used the same weighting equation but only limited the data to a FWHM of 2.5. This allowed about 30 hrs of integrated data.
I am often conflicted with deciding on a tighter FWHM vs a looser FWHM and more data. In this case the additional hours seems better to me.
The last revision just added some noise reduction I neglected in the previous revision.

Original
B
Final
C

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 success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7011540
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

NGC4438 - The Eyes

NGC4438 - The Eyes

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

Sky plot

Histogram

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

NGC4438 - The Eyes

NGC4438 - The Eyes

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

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?

Delete this revision?

Delete this revision?

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