Planetary Nebula Collage Captured over Three Nights (Steven Miller)

Planetary Nebula Collage Captured over Three Nights

There was a big list of planetary nebulas I've been wanting to capture. But lately I had been spending 2-3 nights per target trying to get some dim targets, so I needed a break. So I wrote NINA scripts for a total of 15 PN over 3 nights, spending from about 45 minutes to 3 hours on each, as they crested trees and became visible in my yard which doesn't have very good views of many parts of the sky.

14 of the 15 resulted in an image, with one, PN G129.6+03.4, being way too dim even with the 2 hours I gave. A few bright ones had cores that didn't resolve well as I used my somewhat larger pixel scale ASI2600MC with my Nexus Reducer and Optolong L-Ultimate filter. Normally, for very bright tight PN's I use my ASI485MC camera with very short exposures (0.25-1 second) with no filter. I'll have to try that on a few of the brightest of these nebula, such as the Saturn Nebula, NGC 7009 which didn't resolve well, and also NGC 7662 - Blue Snowball, and NGC 2826 Blinking.

The nebula I captured good enough to at least process:
NGC 1501 - Camel's Eye
NGC 7008 - Fetus
NGC 7139
NGC 40 - Bowtie
NGC 2392 - Eskimo (combined with about 40 minutes of earlier data)
NGC 7048 - Peek-a-boo
NGC 7662 - Blue Snowball
PK 164+31.1 - Headphone (combined with about 1 hour of previous data)
NGC 246 - Skull
PK 116+8.1
NGC 7009 - Saturn
NGC 6826 - Blinking
M76 - Little Dumbbell
NGC 1514 - Crystal Ball

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 failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8689928
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):