Albireo in watercolor style (Paul Ricker)

Albireo in watercolor style

Albireo (β Cygni), the famously beautiful pair in Cygnus. Albireo A (the yellow K giant) is actually a double with a B dwarf companion separated by 40 AU. The visual companion, Albireo B, is another main sequence B star, and it's not clear whether it is actually gravitationally bound to Albireo A. Albireo B is a rapidly rotating Be star. Jim Kaler has more at http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/albireo.html.

Took some frames to check collimation and see if I could get some Airy rings. It's hard to get many background stars without completely blowing out Albireo, but ridiculous amounts of noise reduction give a nice watercolor appearance.

R 12 x 0.25s, 200 gain, -5C

G 13 x 0.25s, 200 gain, -5C

B 11 x 0.25s, 200 gain, -5C

Manually stacked with ASTAP

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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.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3933537
PixInsight job	n/a
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