Markarian Chain and Friends (Annehouw)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: M 84 · M 86 · M 87 · M 88 · M 89 · M 90 · M 91 · NGC 4374 · NGC 4388 · NGC 4402 · NGC 4406 · NGC 4438 · NGC 4459 · NGC 4461 · NGC 4473 · NGC 4477 · NGC 4486 · NGC 4501 · NGC 4548 · NGC 4552 · NGC 4569 · NGC 4571 · Virgo Galaxy

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Markarian Chain and Friends

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Markarian Chain and Friends

My first mosaic with my old and resurrected Megrez 80 FD ApoGrade

This was my first outing with my new mobile setup.

The telescope I have had for many, many years, but it was never used for imaging. After acquiring a better focusser and a better flattener/reducer, it perfoms OK.

I cannot get round stars up into the corners of my APS-C camera and there is some minor blue bloating. Because this is a mosaic of two panes, the scale makes these defects harder to see (and I did some touchups in post processing).

The secondhand iEQ30 turns out to have a periodic error of almost 60 arcseconds and not really smooth. The first nights I could not get an RMS of less than 2 arcseconds in guiding. By experimenting with short exposure times (1second) and Predictive PEC in Phd2, I managed to get it down to 1.2 arcseconds. The imaging scale of the scope is 2.2 arcsecond per pixel and the seeing around here is normally 2.5 arcseconds or more, so 1.2 arcseconds if enough, I think.

Mosaic planned in Telescopius and imported into Astro Photography Tool

Acquired with AstroPhotography Tool (APT), which worked brilliantly, including super fast plate solves with ASTAP and in-plan automated meridian flips.

As usual, all Pre-Processing was done in AstroPixelProcessor. Including light pollution correction and mosaic stitching (which simply worked on my first try).

Post-Processing in PixInsight with some minor touch-ups in Photoshop CS6.

Post-Processing took two whole days. I am still learning (using the superb new book by Rogelio Bernal Andreo as my guide to understand what I am doing) and made several versions before I was happy.

Imaged with APT

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	3482994
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Markarian Chain and Friends

Markarian Chain and Friends

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Markarian Chain and Friends

Markarian Chain and Friends

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

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Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

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