Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24) (Alex Woronow)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Sagittarius (Sgr)

Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24)

Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24)

OTA: CDK17” f/6.5
Camera:
Observatory: Deep Sky West, Chile

Exposures:
R: 6 x 300 sec
G: 11 x 300
B: 7 x 300
H: 9 x 1200 sec
Total Exposure time used: 5 hours
Image Width: 40 arc-minutes

Processing: PixInsight, Topaz Studio2, Luminar Neo, and custom scripts for image weighting and star replacement (down-sampled 2x for publication)

The image set was not labeled M 24 but, instead, was labeled "NGC 6567." NGC 6567 is a planetary nebula. I love planetary nebulae. Therefore, I prioritized processing this data set. One problem…the planetary nebula NGC 6567 lies well out of this field of view! Well, at least there's something besides stars in this area.

In part, because the image's subject was not as expected by the telescope operator, OIII subs abounded but had nothing to add to this image field…out they went! I also tossed all the L (because L adds nothing to any DSO color image, despite folklore to the contrary—thanks to AI noise removal technology). Also and about a third of the remaining images were rejected as out of focus and such—bye-bye. So, from 24 hours of image-capture time, 5 hours remained…not because of a "lucky capture" exercise but because of "unlucky miscapture." Still, the image looks just fine to me.

The upside takeaway is that with all the modern image-capture and image-processing tools, we can produce excellent images with far fewer subs than were once required.

Alex Woronow

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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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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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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 failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7989294
PixInsight job	VJORU3P8A5TDWH89O8BJBZMQOHII56UY
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	PLATE_SOLVING_IMAGE

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Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24)

Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24)

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Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24)

Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24)

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