M45 - Galaga Cluster (Scott Sloka)

M45 - Galaga Cluster

This is the second light from my new Aspen CG16M camera (first light is still being acquired in parts). I had technical difficulties all night long, but it was about 15C outside all night, which is unusual for an Ontario October, and I actually enjoyed working through the issues as they came up. An odd kind of therapy. 12x600sec luminance and 12x300sec each of RGB. 5 hours total.

I don't often find this cluster displayed in this orientation, and with the square image I think it either looks like an 80s video game (Galaga) or the millennium falcon.

There are 2 versions of the image, one post LRGB combination and one with enhancement of the underlying structures. I like the first version better (looks cleaner to me), but the second version was important for me to fool around with as I am hoping to use my setup to image fainter regions of the sky and I needed to learn how to enhance these regions.

Final
Original
B

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	814619
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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