M51 Whirlpool (Martin Palenik)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 51 · NGC 5169 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · NGC 5229 · Whirlpool galaxy

Powered byPixInsight

M51 Whirlpool

Powered byPixInsight

M51 Whirlpool

M51 - Whirlpool

This is my first image done at my new local astronomy club, The Hamilton RASC. The skies are much better than at home and it's fairly close by which makes it very convenient. I've met a bunch of wonderful people there already who are very much into astronomy and there seems to be a large interest in astrophotography here as well so it's nice to see this much enthusiasm.

Decided to try M51 as there was a half moon out and it was farthest away and the highest object. I also got to fully test out my new moonlite focuser which held focus perfectly all night, I was almost at the zenith here.

Also, I recently made a bahnitov mask, I can't believe I had waited so long, I was really able to dial it in with the moonlite to get it as tight as possible. I found using a lower ISO on a bright star actually helped get tighter spikes.

I thought M51 was going to be too small for my 80mm but I am actually quite excited how it turned out. Versions B/C are crops showing more galaxy detail.

Thanks for viewing, clear skies!

Original
B
C
Final
D

Cloudy Nights

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	1074307
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M51 Whirlpool

M51 Whirlpool

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M51 Whirlpool

M51 Whirlpool

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

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?

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