M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy (HaRGB) (Erik Bachmann)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Andromeda (And) · Contains: Andromeda Galaxy · M 110 · M 31 · M 32 · NGC 205 · NGC 221 · NGC 224

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy (HaRGB), Erik Bachmann

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M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy (HaRGB)

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M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy (HaRGB)

This is a 2 panel mosaic of our neighbor - M31, the Andromeda Galaxy - which is around 2.5 million lightyears away from us. It is estimated to contain around 1 trillion stars - about twice the number of stars in our Milky Way.

The RGB data for this image was captured during an unusually long streak of five consecutive clear nights around new moon in September 2020. After that it took me over a month to capture the H-alpha data due to weeks of bad weather. All in all I ended up with around 13.8h of RGB and 8.7h of H-alpha per panel, summing all up to a total of just shy of 45 h of exposure time.

This is to date by far my biggest project, both regarding acquisition time as well as the time that went into processing the data until I was almost satisfied. I still feel like the colors in the outer regions of the galaxy are off but I just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. However what I'm really happy about is that I finally found a way to greatly reduce the chromatic aberation around stars which made the entire starfield look way too blue. I think that overall the stars now look much more natural. Also I am happy with the way the sharpening turned out, nicely bringing out details in the dustlanes, the HII-regions and the blue starfields in the outer spirals arms while simultaneously adding a nice, even grain to the image.

Overall I am happy with the way the image turned out and I did learn a lot along the way.

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	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4001646
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy (HaRGB)

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy (HaRGB)

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy (HaRGB)

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy (HaRGB)

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

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