Shelob's Lair (Mark 2) (Paul Hancock)

Shelob's Lair (Mark 2)

Shelob lies in wait, anticipating the harmonious twang as her next meal becomes entrapped in her web. You can see the remains of a small scorpion to her left, a previous meal.

The Tarantula nebula is a massive HII region within the Large Magellanic Cloud. The weather was briefly good here and the seeing was exceptional. This is 6 hours of SHO data captured from my backyard. Hopefully the weather will clear again so I can continue to capture photons of this beautiful region of space.

I've added nearly double the data to my original image and decided that while I usually love the SHO palette it wasn't working for Shelob, so I went with a more duo tone look.

I am hoping to capture much more OIII and SII data in the coming months, the Ha stack looks good now.

I took only the best frames based on FWHM and used them to create a synthetic luminance, this layer received deconvolution and sharpening.

C

Description: An alternative version, with a more careful noise reduction on the luminance and less aggressive stretch. (I uploaded the wrong file before this one if any wonders why this version changed).

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: An alternative framing, a touch wider. Not sure I like it better, I think I do.

Uploaded: ...

E

Description: Decided to use all 20 hours of data weighted using subframe selector. There is a moderate loss of sharpness compared with only using the best 5.5 hours of ha as luminance but a very significant reduction in background noise.

Uploaded: ...

F

Description: Another ground up reprocess of the full 20 hours of data.

Uploaded: ...

G

Description: Shelob reprocessed using the Foraxx palette.

Uploaded: ...

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 pending
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3950610
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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