The 'Cat's eye' Galaxy - M94. (astroeyes)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 94 · NGC 4736

The 'Cat's eye' Galaxy - M94., astroeyes

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The 'Cat's eye' Galaxy - M94.

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The 'Cat's eye' Galaxy - M94.

Although bright and well known, M94 in CVn has some interesting features.

At this time of the year M94 is ideally placed for observation and every year I can't resist trying for a better image than last year, hopefully showing the highly elusive faint outer ring, visible in very deep exposures.

M94 is classified Sab. The bright circular central disc is surrounded by a ring of active star-forming regions, which sharply separates it from the much less bright outer ring of older yellow stars. In the outskirts, this region however ends again in a ring with moderate star formation activity, so that M94 is one of the relatively few galaxies in which two "waves" of stellar formation can be observed. In very long exposures, a further very faint ring, about 15 arc minutes across, becomes visible.

The distance of M94 is not well known varying from around 14 million light years to 33 million light years.

The night was calm and clear with a faint haze. My image consists of 33 x 3 minute exposures through my 10" Newtonian. Can you see the very faint outer ring? With a little imagination, maybe.

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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
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Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
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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
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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
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Astrometry.net job	7380489
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The 'Cat's eye' Galaxy - M94.

The 'Cat's eye' Galaxy - M94.

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The 'Cat's eye' Galaxy - M94.

The 'Cat's eye' Galaxy - M94.

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