M63 (Sunflower Galaxy) (Joel Shepherd)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 63 · NGC 5055 · Sunflower Galaxy

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M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

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M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

Did I tell you about my mount? Let me tell you about my mount. In early January, my mount suddenly stopped working. It wouldn't move the telescope. It just reported "motor stall" and sat there. John, the awesome owner and head technician at the SkyPi observatory opened it up, peered in and thought he saw a pile of metal shavings, which, in a machine that is supposed to track with close to 1/10,000th of a degree accuracy, is not what you want to see. So he broke down the whole rig, hauled it down the mountain and got ready to send it back to the manufacturer. But before he did, he opened it up further, stuck his finger into the pile and pushed. It smeared. It wasn't (mostly) metal shavings after all: it was old, stiff, dirty grease that'd finally created enough friction to stop the motors. Hallelujah. He was able to thoroughly clean it and regrease it, and while I won't say that it was easy getting it back into service again, it finally is.

This is my first production for 2023 then. Processing-wise, the main thing of interest was that I tried BlurXTerminator for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised by it: it did a nice job tightening up the stars and brought out some detail in the galaxy that I would have struggled to do myself, but it didn't magically create an unrealistic image: there was still a lot to do in terms of stretching, saturating, adjusting contrast and even at the end a little more work with more prosaic tools on the sharpness of the details. But I will say it probably cut my processing time in half, which I greatly appreciate.

The refractors!
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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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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.
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	7615432
PixInsight job	OEL5FP3R8H7A6N2V59U6ZSJ8GW8MZQGK
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h15m45s.00
RA (top/left)	13h13m42s.11
RA (top/right)	13h15m56s.12
RA (bottom/right)	13h17m47s.77
RA (bottom/left)	13h15m33s.78

Dec (center)	+42°02′50″.3
Dec (top/left)	+42°04′11″.3
Dec (top/right)	+41°40′05″.2
Dec (bottom/right)	+42°01′21″.6
Dec (bottom/left)	+42°25′35″.9

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M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

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M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

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