Cygnus Wall in the "Golf" of Mexico (Aaron Freimark)

Cygnus Wall in the "Golf" of Mexico

Nebula season is coming back! Nebulas like this one — the Cygnus Wall of the North America Nebula — are clouds of gas within our Milky Way.
But why seasons? I'll explain. The Earth orbits the sun during the year. In summer and fall, the Earth is between the Sun and the core of the Milky Way, and in winter and spring the Sun is between us and the Milky Way. When we look towards the sun, we call that "day." When we look away, we call that "night." So during different seasons of the year at night we are observing different parts of the universe. And the Milky Way, with all the beautiful nebulae, is visible only during summer and fall. So, "Nebula Season."

This is the Cygnus Wall in the "Golf of Mexico" -- at least that's how N.I.N.A.'s SkyAtlas spells it. I think it is funny.

Processing
1. WeightedBatchProcessing to calibrate, register, and integrate
2. Draw preview
3. Drizzle Integration with Region of Interest
4. Use EZ Decon on each image to generate PSF files, but don’t run EZ Decon (we’ll run that on the starless images)
5. StarXTerminator on each linear image, generating star masks

Starless
1. PixelMath “K=0” to generate an all-black copy of any of the images
2. EZ Decon, on Ha, with the previously created PSF files, and the all-black copy as the “star mask”. For my data, this improved Ha, but didn't do much for OIII and SII, so I kept only Ha.
3. NoiseXTerminator on each
4. Arcsinhstretch on each, to taste
5. PixelMath to combine a narrowband mix: traditional SHO
6. Invert image & SCNR to remove Magenta cast
7. Extract L, Curves Transformation to dramatize, and use LRGB Combination to re-apply to SHO (checking only L component)
8. CurvesTransformation

Stars
1. LinearFit OIII and SII to Ha
2. ChannelCombination
3. SCNR
4. HistogramTransformation

Combination
1. PixelMath: 1-((1-SHO)*(1-stars))

Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association (MHAA)
Northeast Imagers

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	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

	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

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
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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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5832178
PixInsight job	Q7B2H1PF04ZM0Y622XZEA4Q17VGAHFIW
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h59m43s.846
RA (top/left)	21h01m00s.415
RA (top/right)	20h56m23s.455
RA (bottom/right)	20h58m28s.844
RA (bottom/left)	21h03m05s.282

Dec (center)	+43°38′30″.98
Dec (top/left)	+44°12′52″.13
Dec (top/right)	+43°31′24″.31
Dec (bottom/right)	+43°04′07″.98
Dec (bottom/left)	+43°45′15″.36

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