Helix Nebula in HOO (Jonathan Ranallo)

Helix Nebula in HOO

After a rather long, school-induced hiatus from astrophotography, I've finally gotten back into it over the past few weeks, and it feels good to be back. To start off, I've finally learned how to combine colour channels in PixInsight, and the first thing I did with this new knowledge was process some old data on the Helix and Lagoon nebulae I took back in August 2020 (both in HOO bicolour). Overall, I'm very pleased with how they turned out, especially since I didn't have a lot of data on either target. I'm really looking forward to being able to image the Helix Nebula again this year, once it's high enough above the horizon. There are a lot of weird artefacts in the Lagoon image, but I still think I managed to pull out some really pretty structure in it.

•

•

•

It feels as though I'm on the brink of an astrophotography Renaissance. Previously, I've been plagued by a couple of issues that have been severely limiting my images. Namely, a mis-collimated scope and a lack of processing skills. But now that I've been taking the time to properly learn how to use PixInsight, I can now produce beautiful colour images like these ones. I also put in the time and effort to re-collimate my Borg last August (the same day that I took these images, actually, so just in time). Collimating a doublet refractor is no easy task (luckily for me, it's not a triplet), but I managed to rig up an artificial point source and get the job done. I seem to have done it decently, because I've not noticed any issues with it since. Now that I've taken care of these issues, I'm free to stumble into entirely new issues. But that's just the nature of the game. That's how you know you're improving.

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

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):