The Night Witches of Rigel (AstroDarkSky)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Eridanus (Eri) · Contains: IC 2118 · NGC 1797 · NGC 1799 · NGC 1909 · PK205-26.1 · Witch Head nebula · the Witch Head Nebula

The Night Witches of Rigel

IC2118: The maiden, mother, and crone - three faces that our human minds form as a recognizable pattern in the semi-randomness of nature... 900 light years from Earth, the super giant Rigel illuminates this target in an eerie blue light of the reflection nebula.

An extremely challenging target, but it is still fun to pursue. I used OSC and 300s exposures to swamp the read noise to overcome the challenges a pure luminance filter may have made this just a bit easier.

However, this area of the sky is absolutely horribly polluted with satellites. It was sad that in the hours of acquisition time, there was only a single frame without a trail in sight. I could only find 4 other exposures in the entire night that didn't have 3+ trails in terrible spots occluding the target. In most other targets, you can stack them out since there's a break or pause, but these things just kept repeating in almost the exact same track like a super highway. Hoping this doesn't become a norm for the rest of our planet, but it may be inevitable. Might be able to minimize the impact by using shorter exposures which would leave less elongated trails, but with faint targets, that may not be an option without multiple unrealistically clear nights.

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	8791419
PixInsight job	IL0HL8OVN3IZRD1UP7HYYEI22AGL6F3N
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h05m49s.10
RA (top/left)	05h03m24s.40
RA (top/right)	05h08m13s.20
RA (bottom/right)	05h08m13s.22
RA (bottom/left)	05h03m25s.66

Dec (center)	-07°04′26″.10
Dec (top/left)	-08°02′32″.9
Dec (top/right)	-08°02′40″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	-06°06′17″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	-06°06′11″.7

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The Night Witches of Rigel

The Night Witches of Rigel

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The Night Witches of Rigel

The Night Witches of Rigel

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