M109 #1 (Molly Wakeling)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 109 · NGC 3992 · PGC 2436214 · PGC 2437949 · PGC 2438633 · PGC 2443807 · PGC 2444216 · PGC 2444393 · PGC 2832093 · PGC 2832094 · PGC 2832095 · PGC 2832098 · PGC 37621 · PGC 37700

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M109 #1

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M109 #1

From April's trip to the dark sky site...M109!

I am super happy with how this came out. I wish I could image in dark skies all the time!

M109 is a barred spiral galaxy behind Ursa Major, about 83 million lightyears away. The bar is quite prominent amidst its several arms. It's the most distant Messier object, and one of the dimmer ones at magnitude 9.8. It's near the star Phecda in the Big Dipper (which was the source of quite a lot of "lens flare" that I had to crop out of the image!), which is on the bottom of the bowl on the handle side of the asterism.

M109 is 120,000 lightyears in diameter, or about 20% larger than the Milky Way, and is home to a trillion stars. The smaller galaxy below and to the right of M109 is UGC 6969, which is a 15th magnitude galaxy that is about the same distance away as M109, but is much smaller. Above and to the right of M109 is UGC 6940, which is 16th magnitude and also about the same distance away but much smaller.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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Top picks
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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
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Star trails
Northern lights
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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
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Amateur hosting facility
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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	4563322
PixInsight job	TCDM63Y0PZEDL2C77NA492I6YWCA6TNX
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	11h57m35s.944
RA (top/left)	11h55m42s.497
RA (top/right)	11h58m41s.615
RA (bottom/right)	11h59m30s.279
RA (bottom/left)	11h56m29s.383

Dec (center)	+53°23′41″.50
Dec (top/left)	+53°14′25″.77
Dec (top/right)	+53°07′03″.96
Dec (bottom/right)	+53°32′50″.54
Dec (bottom/left)	+53°40′17″.49

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M109 #1

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