M95 & M96, 27 Apr 2013 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Leo (Leo) · Contains: M 95 · M 96 · NGC 3351 · NGC 3368

M95 & M96, 27 Apr 2013

It took me a while to find these galaxies tonight; I needed about 5 s exposures in the imager to see them. As before, they are found using the Telrad by placing it midway between the two bright stars at the bottom of Leo with the outer ring tangent to the line connecting them. I was trying guiding with no noise reduction binning (as a hold-over from the days when I used the LPI for guiding, I've always used 3x3). This definitely made the stars look smaller in the guider, but also made several hot pixels prominent, and even using darks did not get rid of all of them. Next time I should probably use 2x2 noise reduction, which kind of makes sense with the OSC sensor I have anyway. This was also the first time using a barrel extender on the ST80 so I did not have to use the star diagonal to reach focus. I like this. Clouds, which were not in the forecast, cut the session short.

Date: 27 Apr 2013

Subject: M95, M96

Scope: Orion ST-80

Filter: Baader Planetarium UHC-S

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.2

Camera: DSI IIc (6 V, ~1.5 A, T = ~5 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.5, no dither

Exposure: 12x300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3 Crop; Develop; Color: saturation 96%, bottom 1.3 top 9.3; Contrast; HDR:Equalize; Sharpen; Deconvolute:3.0 pix; Track; Wipe:Gradient; Denoise; Magic:Shrink , Life:Moderate; Color:Bottom 3.8, Top Full. CS6 Astronomy Tools layer masked levels, star color enhance, AstroFrame.

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	6903902
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M95 & M96, 27 Apr 2013

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M95 & M96, 27 Apr 2013

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

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?

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