M31 LRGB+Ha+Oiii (Brian Namovicz)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Andromeda (And) · Contains: Andromeda Galaxy · HD3431 · HD3447 · HD3765 · HD3827 · HD4143 · HD4174 · HD4322 · M 110 · M 31 · M 32 · NGC 205 · NGC 206 · NGC 221 · NGC 224

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M31 LRGB+Ha+Oiii

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M31 LRGB+Ha+Oiii

The Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is the closest galaxy to the Milkyway at only 2.5 million light years away. For many (including me) M31 is the first deep sky object photographed in this hobby and is the gateway drug that leads to stupid amount of money and time being poured into telescopes, equatorial mounts, cameras, filters, and processing software all so that we can collect more and more photons that were emitted long before humans walked the Earth.

This is my 5th M31 project in about 1 year of this hobby and I wanted to shoot for something special this time. Back in January 2023 that Oiii emission arc (the bright blue in the top left), named Strottner-Drechsler-Sainty Object 1, was discovered. One of the most photographed objects (first photo was in 1888) in the night sky had a giant blue arc over it that no one had previously noticed. I needed to image it.

As it turns out there is a reason it went unnoticed for so long. To say this this object is extremely faint is an understatement. This entire image is composed of 68 hours and 50 minutes of exposure, 34 hours and 40 minutes of that is a 3nm Oiii filter. After all of that photon collecting the feature is still only slightly brighter than the background noise. Processing this was extremely difficult, I experimented with a few techniques for continuum subtraction to make it visible at all. I look forward to applying those techniques to future images. Even without the blue smudge in the corner I am extremely happy with how this image came out, the H-Alpha data shows some really beautiful features around the galaxy (though probably in the foreground looking out of our galaxy) and a ton of nebulousity in M31 itself.

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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8648355
PixInsight job	56VKBPU1OLEQ6YDTLLUGHS8NKGJT2XZF
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h42m42s.59
RA (top/left)	00h48m06s.24
RA (top/right)	00h49m45s.26
RA (bottom/right)	00h37m00s.20
RA (bottom/left)	00h36m00s.30

Dec (center)	+41°16′28″.4
Dec (top/left)	+39°26′10″.1
Dec (top/right)	+42°55′14″.10
Dec (bottom/right)	+43°05′49″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	+39°35′51″.0

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M31 LRGB+Ha+Oiii

M31 LRGB+Ha+Oiii

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M31 LRGB+Ha+Oiii

M31 LRGB+Ha+Oiii

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