Blue Snowball ngc7662 (Debra Ceravolo)

Blue Snowball ngc7662

More experimentation with the Boller and Chivens 16 inch scope. Coupled with an SBIG Aluma 694, a resolution of .126 arc seconds per pixel was attained. This proved to be a really big challenge for me. With a focal length of 7400mm, it needs adaptive optics to settle things down as even with good seeing, the images were a little wonky. I ended up with 3 hours each of Ha, OIII and Hb data. 1 minute subs after throwing away half that. I also found that this close in an image, processing software had many issues as well, like star matching, plate solving and other problems.
This little planetary is quite bright for a little thing and that was a challenge as well. The central ring seemed too bright to tone down but I was happy with the detail of some of the structure. The image is a little cropped as there was not much else to show. There is an outer ring picked up with the luminance, but also the diffraction spikes from the bright core, so I didn't include it. I just stayed with the narrowband data.

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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.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8729542
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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