Messier 31: Ms. Andromeda on a Good-Hair Day (Alex Woronow)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Andromeda (And) · Contains: Andromeda Galaxy · HD3969 · HD4143 · HD4174 · HD4322 · M 110 · M 31 · M 32 · NGC 205 · NGC 206 · NGC 221 · NGC 224

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Messier 31: Ms. Andromeda on a Good-Hair Day

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Messier 31: Ms. Andromeda on a Good-Hair Day

Messier 31: Ms. Andromeda on a Good-Hair Day
OTA: RH-305 (12” f/3.5)
Camera: SBIG STX-16803
Observatory: Deep Sky West

EXPOSURES (2018)
R: 45 x 300 seconds
G: 44 x 300
B: 32 x 300
L: 34 x 300
L: 30 x 30
Total exposure 13.2 hours
Image Width: 1.75 deg
Processed by Alex Woronow (2022) using PixInsight, Topaz

Did you ever wonder what M 31 would look like if the intervening interstellar cloud did not block some of its light, some of its detail? This rendering devolves from guided dehazing of the image; that's a way of saying, it benefits from algorithms that do a remarkable job of removing the identifying and subtracting out the effects of that interstellar cloud.

This set of data sat on my drive for 5+years. I thought the Andromeda Galaxy was a fearless, or nearly so, DSO with no challenges for image processing. Boy! was I wrong! Using a super-luminosity component and some of the forms of the dark clouds became evident. They display a remarkable complexity as the dark stringers interweave with the bright clouds.

I processed the image two ways and combined the results. The first way was using my standard workflow. Then, wondering how much aliasing appears in that image, I started over and used a Nyquist Reconstruction and 1x Drizzle. The results were, as far as detail goes, indistinguishable, even with a 4x scale and the version posted is at ½ scale.

Hope you enjoy viewing this galaxy as much as I enjoyed processing the wonderfully precise data set.

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.

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.
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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	6353926
PixInsight job	79J4G02PIN62RQ6QAWTKWH33133SJ2EE
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h43m00s.36
RA (top/left)	00h38m25s.90
RA (top/right)	00h47m49s.62
RA (bottom/right)	00h47m43s.39
RA (bottom/left)	00h38m03s.13

Dec (center)	+41°14′21″.9
Dec (top/left)	+40°18′39″.9
Dec (top/right)	+40°21′19″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+42°09′20″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	+42°06′39″.0

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Messier 31: Ms. Andromeda on a Good-Hair Day

Messier 31: Ms. Andromeda on a Good-Hair Day

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Messier 31: Ms. Andromeda on a Good-Hair Day

Messier 31: Ms. Andromeda on a Good-Hair Day

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