With some nice weather lately I decided to shoot this distant interacting galaxy pair in Canis Major.
Made famous by images taken with HST I though I'd give it a crack but with only 1120mm FL at my disposal I needed some good seeing...well...first night was below average, the second night was above average and the third and final session was crap...but luckily that was when I collected the RGB (phew thank god)
... sooo can't complain I guess but as usual I can only wonder what it would be like to image from a place with truly good seeing (all the time
)
I kept the processng on the light side to hopefully better show the combined faint outer halo and extended spiral arm - come tidal tail (?) of NGC 2207, that both also show up nicely in high contrast negative..and as usual no darks, no flats and also no noise reduction or gradient removal was used...nor any >lasso tool>brighten to make something arbitrary appear from nowhere
NGC 2207 and IC 2163 are quite a distance away at 150 Million Lyrs so
together they only cover approx 5' of sky, so extracting details is a challenge.
NGC 2207 is the closer of the two and you can make out her large extended arm passing in front of the slightly more distant IC 2163
AS usual here are a few variations to help reveal the subject
Cosmic Embrace in Canis Major (100% crop, FOV ~ 14' X 12')
The Full Frame (FOV ~ 38' X 30')
High Contrast Negative
here is a
comparison with the ESO 3.6m scope at La Silla
and finally
The Wallaroo Galaxy Probe 
More clear (hot) weather on the way too...