M96 Spiral Galaxy (Roger Menard)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Leo (Leo) · Contains: M 96 · NGC 3368

Powered byPixInsight

M96 Spiral Galaxy

Powered byPixInsight

M96 Spiral Galaxy

I am trying to finish imaging all of the really interesting Messier galaxies in Leo while Leo is still high enough in the night sky. So I tried to image M96. Everything seemed to go well. I started imaging with ZWO ASI2600 OSC attached to celestron 11 inch Edge SCT at about 8:30PM. I used a ZWO ASI290 attached to a 5 inch refractor for autoguiding.

I set SGP to take 2 minute exposures ending around 2:30AM when Leo would be too low for my observatory. Everything was going as planned. SGP performed a meridian flip on schedule and continued imaging. Then around 11PM PHD2 stopped due to loss of star. Somehow the 5 inch refractor got too far out-of-focus for PHD2 to find stars. I did not notice this until about 12:45AM. At that time I restarted but only acquired 87 images, the last few were unusable. This is the first time that my system has gone out of focus while imaging.

Anyone have a similar issue? In the future I may have to 'lock' the focuser once I have it corr4ctly focused.

M96 is part of the M96 galaxy group which includes M95 and M105. The interesting thing about M96 is that it is thought to be almost identical to our Milky Way in terms of size and mass.

IOptron CEM
ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO
PixInsight Addicts

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	5707037
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M96 Spiral Galaxy

M96 Spiral Galaxy

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

M96 Spiral Galaxy

M96 Spiral Galaxy

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

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?

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