M31 Andromeda Galaxy #20 (Molly Wakeling)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Andromeda (And) · Contains: Andromeda Galaxy · M 110 · M 31 · M 32 · NGC 205 · NGC 206 · NGC 221 · NGC 224 · PGC 2168731 · PGC 2168810 · PGC 2169318 · PGC 2172440 · PGC 2174300 · PGC 2174839 · PGC 2175082 · PGC 2175091 · PGC 2176150 · PGC 2176787 · PGC 2179524 · PGC 2180265 · PGC 2183588 · PGC 2185341 · PGC 2187102 · PGC 2189331 · PGC 2304 · PGC 2318 · PGC 2544 · PGC 2748 · PGC 2772 · PGC 3087882 · And 2 more.

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M31 Andromeda Galaxy #20

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M31 Andromeda Galaxy #20

This is my 20th attempt at it, and I finally have a result I'm reasonably happy with. I always struggle with color and depth for Andromeda, and I did have to play with it quite a bit, but I think it's eye-catching at least, if not quite accurate!

What can I say about M31? It's a very popular astronomical object. One thing that I think is forgotten a lot is just how /big/ the Andromeda Galaxy is on our sky. If we could see its whole extent naked-eye like how the camera sees it, it would fill an area the size of six full Moons! And I love bringing up that it's on a collision course with the Milky Way, some 4-5 billion years from now. Of course, no actual stars will be slamming into each other, but it will shake things up substantially!

On the technical side, I used a new script in PixInsight called NormalizeScaleGradient, which you apply to your calibrated, registered subframes before stacking. It calculates weighting values and scales images that have varying background levels to a reference image. My result was a lot cleaner and easier to deal with than what I usually get from this camera!

Women Astrophotographers
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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.

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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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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4975242
PixInsight job	QB6J328L05C97JTG547JID6P7OEC3MWJ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	00h42m44s.80
RA (top/left)	00h48m22s.56
RA (top/right)	00h37m25s.55
RA (bottom/right)	00h37m00s.37
RA (bottom/left)	00h48m11s.35

Dec (center)	+41°16′47″.7
Dec (top/left)	+40°36′19″.3
Dec (top/right)	+40°31′31″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	+41°56′11″.6
Dec (bottom/left)	+42°01′15″.4

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M31 Andromeda Galaxy #20

M31 Andromeda Galaxy #20

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Image Index:

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M31 Andromeda Galaxy #20

M31 Andromeda Galaxy #20

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