M51 Whirlpool Galaxy (my wife sees a snail) (Aaron Freimark)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: IC 4263 · IC 4277 · IC 4278 · M 51 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · Whirlpool Galaxy

Powered byPixInsight

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy (my wife sees a snail)

Powered byPixInsight

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy (my wife sees a snail)

This is M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, shot last night in Cold Spring. Two galaxies spinning around, with the larger slowly hoovering up the smaller.

The galaxy is about 76,000 light years wide. That's a bit less than half the size of our Milky Way. Hidden in the center of M51 is a black hole.

This image was made using 204 individual photos, between 1 and 4 minutes each, using a combination of five filters: R, G, B, L, and Ha narrowband. I superimposed and processed these with PixInsight.

1. WeightedBatchProcessing (Calibrate only),

2. Crop

3. Image Registration

4. Subframe Selector

5. Local Normalization

6. Image Integration

7. Drizzle Integration

8. Dynamic Background Extraction

9. EZ Denoise

10. LinearFit R & G to B

11. ChannelCombination RGB

12. RGB: Photometric Color Calibration

13. RGB: ArcsinhStretch

14. RGB: HistogramTransformation

15. L: ArcsinhStretch

16. L: CurvesTransformation

17. L: LocalHistogramEqualization

18. LRGB Combination

19. Ha: ArcsinhStretch

20. Ha: CloneStamp to remove stars

21. PixelMath:

R: 1-((1-RGB) * (1-0.7*Ha))

G: RGB

B: RGB

22. LRGBHa: Topaz Denoise AI

Northeast Imagers
INDI Users
Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association (MHAA)

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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4333364
PixInsight job	M2HXWYVB9WU0V95KDY3TMMC755PTUALR
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	13h29m53s.38
RA (top/left)	13h28m27s.12
RA (top/right)	13h28m20s.77
RA (bottom/right)	13h31m18s.77
RA (bottom/left)	13h31m27s.13

Dec (center)	+47°11′41″.5
Dec (top/left)	+47°30′20″.4
Dec (top/right)	+46°54′01″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+46°52′57″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	+47°29′16″.0

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy (my wife sees a snail)

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy (my wife sees a snail)

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy (my wife sees a snail)

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy (my wife sees a snail)

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information