NGC 6302 Bug Nebula (Nik Szymanek)

NGC 6302 Bug Nebula

Another one from the archives!
This image dates back to 26-05-2006 and was taken using the 2-metre Faulkes Telescope North on Maui, Hawaii. This telescope and its counterpart in Australia were offered as robotic imaging systems to school children for educational outreach. I was involved with the Faulkes Telescope Project quite early on as a keen amateur astro-imager and was given lots of access to the telescopes.
This image was made up of just six 90-second exposures with an H-alpha filter along with something like 5-minutes exposure per RGB filter. Exposure times had to be kept short as there was no autoguider.
The seeing conditions weren't particularly good that night.
The CCD had a 1024 x1024 array of pixels binned 2 x 2 for these images. The FITS header reports a pixel size of 13.5 microns and an operating temperature of 156 Kelvin. I remember the cryogenic cooling features of the camera caused a lot of problems as did the observatory door blowing open on windy nights triggering intruder alarms and shutting down the system mid-way through an imaging run!
This is a slight reprocess of my original image using modern software.
The Faulkes Telescopes were later integrated into the Las Cumbres Global Telescope Network.
Nik Szymanek

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
Artificial satellite

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 failed
Started	...
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

AstroBin

AstroBin

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):