The Sunflower Galaxy - M63 (Nico Augustin)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 63 · NGC 5055 · PGC 2191787 · PGC 2193890 · PGC 46093 · Sunflower Galaxy · TYC3024-1166-1 · TYC3024-814-1

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The Sunflower Galaxy - M63

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The Sunflower Galaxy - M63

This is an entirely new image of the M63 data I captured in March 2021. As time went by, and clear nights were rare, I had enough chances to learn more about processing, and meanwhile, I'm almost completely off AstroPixelProcessor and entirely working in PixInsight. With one latest, almost magical tools that we got in PixInsight in the last years, I decided to recalibrate, restack and reprocess a few projects that I felt did not turn out as well as I expected from the quality of the raw data. Of course, there are as many post-processing work-flows as astrophotographers, but our processing skills influence how pleased or disappointed we are after hours of work we spend on an image.
My new image of M63, the Sunflower Galaxy, is an excellent example from my database. I took it when I started shooting deep space with my EdgeHD 8 and the OSC ASI194MC Pro. With my travel gear, I always faced issues in the field, and back then, things like off-axis guiding and proper collimation were new to me (it partly still is). But I felt the single 300s raw frames were not too bad, but stacking showed me some issues in sharpness and star shapes — a combination of focus, collimation, and guiding of a too-large telescope on a too-small mount. Also, I had a hard time processing the stacked image. Getting rid of noise, and trying to get details back and the colors kind of right but with a decent amount of vividness was a struggle.
However, a little older, a little better skilled, and with plenty of excellent software tools, I reprocessed the data from 2021, and the result is much better than almost two years ago. Thus, I consider this image a completely new one and don't upload it as a new iteration of my old M63 image.

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	6814857
PixInsight job	LBE3JDPXR66Y58XFRU177PIZQFEXVLH2
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h15m50s.902
RA (top/left)	13h17m09s.275
RA (top/right)	13h14m26s.154
RA (bottom/right)	13h14m32s.954
RA (bottom/left)	13h17m15s.185

Dec (center)	+42°01′19″.51
Dec (top/left)	+42°12′15″.25
Dec (top/right)	+42°10′29″.35
Dec (bottom/right)	+41°50′21″.15
Dec (bottom/left)	+41°52′06″.36

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The Sunflower Galaxy - M63

The Sunflower Galaxy - M63

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

The Sunflower Galaxy - M63

The Sunflower Galaxy - M63

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