[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Very nice. One of my favourite galaxies. Its quite photogenic.

Greg.

Originally Posted by Joshua Bunn

That's stunning! not overly processed, and so many background galaxies.

Josh

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

A stunning and beautifully processed rendition M&T!! That's a three thumbs-upper for sure!

Originally Posted by Ryderscope

A beautiful rendition of this sparkling collection of one very large galaxy and several smaller cousins peppering the scene

Greg, Josh, Rodney, Marcus, thanks very much indeed. The "tiny" galaxies give a feel for how huge the universe is.

Originally Posted by Atmos

Both yours and Lee's version are absolute stop shelf

My first instincts were that you would be able to "resolve" individual stars BUT it did get me thinking about some of the brighter stars in our galaxy could be bright compared to their surrounding. Take Alpha and Beta Ori, they're both about Mag 0 but they have an Absolute Mag of -7.2 & -8.1 respectively which is crazy bright. At a distance of 6 million lightyears it means that some of the luminous supergiants would be around the Mag 18-22 and could show up as individual stars as they're so much brighter than everything around them; they stand out.

Thanks so much for thinking that through Colin. The conclusion is kinda nice: some rare and very bright stars would indeed be visible at that distance.

Originally Posted by Andy01

Nothing significant to add to the worthy praise noted already.

However, the high res appears to have black rings in the cores of the larger stars? And yes, to echo Mike, a bit more blue would aid the aesthetic impact of this already very strong image.

Great to see you guys back regularly pumping out these great images again!

Originally Posted by vlazg

Agree with all, a fantastic image .i am intrigued buy the cluster of galaxies in the top left hand corner, amazing.

Andy, George: Thanks muchly guys. Most kind. We really must pay more attention to artifacts though. My biggest struggle, not just being intensely colourblind but being the guy who wrote the software, is getting the colours right. The problem is dealing with stars with burned-out cores, where the colour info is already lost at exposure time. Fiddling with the colour balance can create some bizarre effects. Some times I'm bloody close to throwing it all in, in disgust, and focusing on gardening.

Best,
Mike