The Whirlpool Galaxy and a close friend: M51A and M51B (Bogdan Borz)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: IC 4277 · IC 4278 · M 51 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · Whirlpool Galaxy

Powered byPixInsight

The Whirlpool Galaxy and a close friend: M51A and M51B

Powered byPixInsight

The Whirlpool Galaxy and a close friend: M51A and M51B

M51A and its smaller companion, M51B are situated 23 million ly away, in Canes Venatici. The Whirlpool galaxy measures 76000 ly in diameter, so it is smaller than the Milky Way. It was the first "nebula" known to poses spiral arms (observed by William Parsons in Ireland, 1845). Of course, later it was realised that it was a galaxy and it was E. Hubble that discovered that by estimating the distances to these "spiral nebulae"! (Source: Wikipedia).

It's galaxy season and it started pretty badly for me: I discovered that I had systematic central circles on my calibrated subs and images with the Newtonian. It took a lot of experimenting and internet research, but finally the problem did not came from the flats calibration process, but from a pupil ghost caused by the coma corrector. Light pollution is the culprit, stray light that hits the front of the protuding coma corrector. As if doing LRGB in Bortle 8 wasn't enough, I have to deal with this too... The famous pair of galaxies fits the circle so I managed to deal with the gradients using DBE.

Original
B
C
Final
D

B

Description: star color

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: faint signal and noise reduction

Uploaded: ...

PixInsight Addicts
AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
Light Polluted skies
ZWO ASI1600MM/QHY163M
AAA : Astronomes et Astrographes Amateurs
Astrophotographes (France)
Narrowband imaging

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	3422791
PixInsight job	01Y1B2AE4WM07VDAUI74UQ5L1Q0AF4FZ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	13h29m55s.871
RA (top/left)	13h28m57s.598
RA (top/right)	13h28m58s.980
RA (bottom/right)	13h30m53s.626
RA (bottom/left)	13h30m54s.175

Dec (center)	+47°13′33″.42
Dec (top/left)	+47°28′10″.30
Dec (top/right)	+46°58′53″.93
Dec (bottom/right)	+46°58′53″.84
Dec (bottom/left)	+47°28′11″.20

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

The Whirlpool Galaxy and a close friend: M51A and M51B

The Whirlpool Galaxy and a close friend: M51A and M51B

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

B

D

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

The Whirlpool Galaxy and a close friend: M51A and M51B

The Whirlpool Galaxy and a close friend: M51A and M51B

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

B

D

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

Delete this revision?

Delete this revision?

Delete this revision?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information