IC4606 Antares Nebula (Joe Niemeyer)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Scorpius (Sco) · Contains: The star Antares (αSco)

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IC4606 Antares Nebula

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IC4606 Antares Nebula

This is the Antares Nebula, a field of gas located a mere 550 light years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius and cataloged as IC4606. This image is dominated by the red supergiant star Antares, which is the 15th brightest star in the night sky. It is several orders of magnitude brighter than the dim nebula surrounding it, so the star is greatly overexposed. For comparison, Antares is about 850 times the diameter of our own Sun, 15 times more massive, and 10,000 times brighter. You could get a suntan pretty quickly if you were on a beach near Antares! Like the similarly sized red supergiant Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, Antares will almost certainly explode as a supernova, possibly in the next ten thousand years. For a few months, the Antares supernova could be as bright as the full moon and even be visible in daytime. The nebula surrounding Antares is gas expelled from the star itself as it nears the end of its life. It has a yellow/orange color, which is rare for a reflection nebula.

I made this image from a stack of twenty 300-second exposures shot at 1630mm focal length, calibrated with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames, then post-processed with Photoshop and DeNoise AI.

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	4713536
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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IC4606 Antares Nebula

IC4606 Antares Nebula

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Image Index:

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IC4606 Antares Nebula

IC4606 Antares Nebula

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