Close Up of M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy (riot1013)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5461 · NGC 5477

Close Up of M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy, riot1013

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Close Up of M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

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Close Up of M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

M101 is one of the largest galaxies in our night sky but also one of the faintest due to the very low surface brightness. It took a long time for me to actually see it for the first time with my own eyes and even longer for me to finally decide to image it.

Battling some really poor skies at time this image was a severe test of patience and determination for me. It culminated in what is, in my humble opinion at least, the best galaxy image that I have captured to this point.

I used my TeleVue NP101is for the vast majority of the integration but used my Explore Scientific 127ED FCD100 for about half of the LUM data. The extra focal length allowed me to pull details out of the galaxy that i may have not gotten with the TeleVue alone.

At 826min of integration I feel that I could maybe go a little deeper and I would love to put some Ha data as well, but I will let this image stand as is for now. It is one of the few images that I have done that just makes me smile when I look at it so I will leave well enough alone.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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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
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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
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	4043311
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Close Up of M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

Close Up of M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

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Close Up of M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

Close Up of M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy

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