Orion's Belt -- Luminance (ADBjester)

Orion's Belt -- Luminance

I have been working on a multi-panel ultra-widefield mosaic of Orion now for 2+ years, and keep running into trouble. In winter 2011, I acquired a ton of color data I had to ditch as too poor (binned 2x2 at 7 arcsec/pixel -- this is the project where I had that revelation about binning color on widefields). In winter 2012, I acquired ALMOST every piece of color I needed... EXCEPT for the RED frames in the lower right. Orion set for the season before I could catch that. ARGH!

So, in winter 2013 I will catch the last of my color, and perhaps expand the project to more than 3x3 panels, which is what you see here.

This is a rough cut of the luminance onl. 9 x 300s in a 3x3 mosaic leads to over 75 megapixels, 10618 x 7207... so be sure to click through the image and inspect it at a deep, full resolution level.

This is "rough" because it was auto-stitched by PhotoShop, so the section with the Orion Nebula (M42) is clearly washed out by comparison. The final color version will be hand-stitched, but to do so I need a high-res black and white on which to morph using RegiStar, and this is it.

I will also be adding HDR exposures to the nebula to prevent core blowout.

For comparison, if the moon were superimposed here, it would be only 514 pixels, or less than the main body of the Orion Nebula center left.

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	n/a
Started	n/a
Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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