M3 (Joel Shepherd)

M3

Subject: M3 in Canes Venatici. Roughly 34000 light-years distant, 180 light-years across, containing a half-million stars and somewhere between eight and eleven billion years old.

Capture notes: Taken with nearly a full moon in the sky, but as Seattle's worst winter in recorded history (122 years) loosens its grip, who is to complain? This was my first attempt to get my (new) 8" EdgeHD and (new) AP Mach1 mount to work together. The first night I failed to polar align, so settled for 30-second unguided lights. The second night was short but much better: guiding with 0.5"-0.6" RMS error, which seems pretty good to me.

Processing notes: I didn't have time to take luminance and synthesized it from the RGB stacks. The stacks were surprisingly low noise, particularly given the moonlight. Is noise somehow related to focal length and pixel size, or was it the sheer number of lights (35 per stack)?

N.I.N.A. Users
Images from the EdgeHD Series
Messier Objects

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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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
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Amateur hosting facility
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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.

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1576480
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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