M86, Bridge to The Eyes (NGC 4435 and 4438) HaLRGB (Bob Rucker)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: IC 3355 · M 86 · NGC 4387 · NGC 4402 · NGC 4406 · NGC 4435 · NGC 4438 · The Eyes

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M86, Bridge to The Eyes (NGC 4435 and 4438) HaLRGB

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M86, Bridge to The Eyes (NGC 4435 and 4438) HaLRGB

This project had me falling deep down the rabbit hole. The quest started when I saw @Timothy Martin's spectacular image of the Eyes - link follows:

https://www.astrobin.com/v1x34t/

What struck me was the presence of Ha which I had not previously seen with this target. I decided to dig a bit deeper and discovered @Jakob Sahner's IOTD of Markarians chain where he resolved the Ha bridge that connects M86 and The Eyes - link follows:

https://www.astrobin.com/f2u321/B/

Jacob's image includes a nice write up about the Ha bridge.

I decided to take a stab at imaging a close up view of M86 and The Eyes with a focus on capturing the Ha bridge. This ended up being much more difficult than I anticipated. I’m sure darker skies and more integration time would have been useful, but I decided to employ some creative processing to get the Ha signal to appear. This would not have been possible without having a reference image to guide me.

I stretched the daylights out of the Ha signal and employed a lot of heavy-handed noise reduction to try and beat things into submission. I'm thinking something more rational might be in order for my next project.

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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
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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
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Star trails
Northern lights
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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.
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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	9675958
PixInsight job	7GO1VOK0TA7X79YUH5PB6ILGWOVLPBA9
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h26m50s.445
RA (top/left)	12h25m44s.946
RA (top/right)	12h28m23s.750
RA (bottom/right)	12h27m56s.148
RA (bottom/left)	12h25m17s.110

Dec (center)	+13°00′17″.12
Dec (top/left)	+12°43′02″.56
Dec (top/right)	+12°54′16″.39
Dec (bottom/right)	+13°17′30″.69
Dec (bottom/left)	+13°06′15″.45

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M86, Bridge to The Eyes (NGC 4435 and 4438) HaLRGB

M86, Bridge to The Eyes (NGC 4435 and 4438) HaLRGB

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M86, Bridge to The Eyes (NGC 4435 and 4438) HaLRGB

M86, Bridge to The Eyes (NGC 4435 and 4438) HaLRGB

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