M64 (Tim Hawkes) - AstroBin

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com) · Contains: Black Eye Galaxy · Evil Eye Galaxy · M 64 · NGC 4826

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M64

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M64

M64 is a spiral galaxy 17 m ly away comprising about 100 billion stars and 26,000 ly across. It's characterizing feature as the so-called 'Evil eye' galaxy is a band of absorbing dust partially obscuring its bright nucleus. Remarkably the gas in the outer regions of this galaxy is rotating in the opposite direction from the gas , dust and stars in its inner regions. This is probably a consequence of a merger between M64 and a satellite galaxy over a billion years ago. New stars are forming in the region near the core where the oppositely rotating gases collide, are compressed, and then contract. Hot newly formed blue stars causing HA emission from the hydrogen clouds there. M64 is inclined 60° to the line of sight and is generally classified as a (R)SA(rs)ab galaxy where the '(R)' indicates an outer ring-like structure, 'SA' denotes a non-barred spiral, '(rs)' means a transitional inner ring/spiral structure, and 'ab' says the spiral arms are fairly tightly wound. It is also a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy with an HII/ LINER nucleus and the core is a weak source of radio emissions.

The image here comprises an OSC capture - total exposure ~2.3h using a 200 mm Newtonian informed by ~ 2.5h of luminance data from a 12 inch Newtonian under bortle 7 skies and processed in PixInsight.

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	7838753
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Image Index:

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M64

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