[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by alpal

Ray,
Hi Ray,
The 10" f4 is a magical size that can work on an EQ6 mount.
It's the biggest bang for the buck.
All is well - I am finding out a lot about mirrors etc:

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...d.php?t=132458

Not only what I'll use - but many other manufacturers & also refractors.

cheers
Allan

yes, your references make interesting reading, particularly the testing of the refractors.

Originally Posted by LewisM

Ray, love it, agree it needs a LITTLE bootst in blue perhaps, but incredible detail - those background galaxies pop!

thanks very much Lewis. I will be attempting a mild repro soon to see what it looks like with a bit more oomph.

Originally Posted by alistairsam

Looks awesome Ray, Even the ESO image doesn't show as much outer extensions if I'm seeing it right.
I'd go for a bit more contrast within the galaxy but each to their own..

Alistair

thanks for the feedback Alistair. It's always a balance between extracting the dim bits while not compressing the bright bits too much - will try out some more contrast in the core region.

Originally Posted by Placidus

Hi, Ray,

Looks superb to me. Stars beautiful. Faint outer spiral captured. Tiny fuzzies in the distance show good form.

I threw some hard statistics at the colour balance. Your histogram black point and dark regions look perfect. Ignoring monitor calibration, and just looking at the numbers, your core, and the ESO core, are both 10% saturated, theirs a perfect pink while yours shows the tiniest smidgin of magenta. Nothing in it. So far so good. The star-forming region at about 5 o'clock from the core in your shot is about 18% saturated cyan-blue, whereas theirs is 28% saturated cyan-blue. If we pretend the ESO shot is the "answer in the back of the book", there is room for you to increase the saturation of the mid-tones a bit. You'd need to mask in the galaxy, mask out the darks to avoid colour noise, and mask out the stars, as they are already pretty strongly saturated. Just doing that should give better blues in the star-forming regions, but might make the core a tiny bit too warm compared with ESO. Nice problem to have!

thanks for the analysis and kind comments Mike. I will do a repro in the near future to see what is possible.

Originally Posted by SpaceNoob

Very impressive, I love the little galaxy in the background too

Thanks for the comments Chris - I also like that barred spiral and tried to keep it intact through the processing.

thanks all for the constructive input. regards Ray