Horsehead and Flame Nebula (IC2023/NGC2024) Big Surprise!!! (JimGunn32563)

Horsehead and Flame Nebula (IC2023/NGC2024) Big Surprise!!!

YAY! My surprise. After getting the North America Nebula imaging started, I climbed into my truck for a nap (I traveled to a darker sky site, Bortle 5), set the alarm on my phone, expecting to pack up and leave at 3 am. When I woke up, I just knew my eyes were deceiving me. I could see the Orion Constellation through my windshield. I wasn't expecting to be able to see that for another month or two as it is considered a winter constellation. But I suppose if you are up late (or early) enough, you can catch it earlier. This is my absolute favorite nebula/s, the Horsehead and Flame nebula. This image is 2 hours and 15 minutes of total exposure time and I was lucky enough that the moon set about 4 am so that really helped capture the very faint red Hydrogen cloud. I didn't get back to the house until 6:15 this morning and was in bed two minutes later.

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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
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.

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PixInsight job	n/a
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