M104 The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo in RGB (One More Good Night in the 21st Century) (Ian Parr)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: M 104 · NGC 4594 · Sombrero Galaxy

M104 The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo in RGB (One More Good Night in the 21st Century), Ian Parr

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M104 The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo in RGB (One More Good Night in the 21st Century)

Powered byPixInsight

M104 The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo in RGB (One More Good Night in the 21st Century)

The Sombrero Galaxy is a peculiar galaxy of unclear classification in the constellation borders of Virgo and Corvus, being about 9.55 megaparsecs from the Milky Way galaxy.
It is a member of the Virgo II Groups, a series of galaxies and galaxy clusters strung out from the southern edge of the Virgo Supercluster. Size: 9' × 4' Distance: 29.35 million light years
Magnitude: 8.0 Stars: 100 billion.

One more rare night with very good seeing and unusually, no risk of rain, so I left the rig running on M104 until 5am which makes a huge difference to how much colour I could wring out of it.

The new Pixinsight Weighted Batch Process does not like less than 15 subs per channel to provide Drizzled data so after saving the selection to a CSV file in Subframe Selector, I cheat and while the rejections are being whisked away, I pick the best subs for each channel and clone them the required number of time to get drizzle to work happily (Yes cheating!). The process is part of an Excel spreadsheet I wrote with a lot of VBA code to manage Pixinsight and that cheat is now built in and takes no time at all after the rejects are dealt with. Working with Drizzled output has some major advantages in processing.

Astro Imaging in the 21st Century

Of course simply getting a lot more quality data would be the way to go but the realities of the current climate, and blazing Star Link satellites, can get in the way.
It was not that long ago 2-3 good nights a week were normal but now its more like 3 good nights a month if your lucky. Dang! I picked the wrong century to get pot committed on Astro Imaging.
But if I rented time on a rig on a mountain in Chile where would be the fun in that?

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 success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7204222
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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M104 The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo in RGB (One More Good Night in the 21st Century)

M104 The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo in RGB (One More Good Night in the 21st Century)

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Contribution Index (beta):

M104 The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo in RGB (One More Good Night in the 21st Century)

M104 The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo in RGB (One More Good Night in the 21st Century)

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