The Pleiades (David McClain)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Taurus (Tau) · Contains: Maia nebula · Merope nebula · NGC 1432 · NGC 1435 · The star Atlas (27Tau) · The star Celaeno (16Tau) · The star Electra (17Tau) · The star Merope (23Tau) · The star Pleione (28Tau) · The star Sterope I (21Tau) · The star Taygeta (19Tau) · The star ηTau

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The Pleiades

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The Pleiades

FINALLY!! A decent exposure.

It occurred to me today, while watching none of my flats working properly, that I might have a stray light problem in my backyard. Very likely... So I rolled up a sheet of thick black plastic to make a tube at the end of my HyperStar + C8 and tied it with a string.

This image is a test (a testament?). And the results are in. You need to be sure to block stray light, else you end up with all kinds of crap all around the edges and corners of the images.

... just noticed an edge-on spiral galaxy just to the West (right) of Electra - about halfway between Electra and the edge of the image.

---

Well, I was quite mistaken. The trouble was not with stray light, but rather, inadequate flats. Yesterday I took a bunch of twilight flats using a slightly different technique to what I had been doing, and that made a huge difference to the outcomes.

I went back over the previous days collections, using the latest flats, and those collections did not take precautions against stray light. Yet, with the new flats, the outcomes are quite gratifying.

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	951739
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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