Huge body of work Rolf and I cannot help feeling that 60 hours of that time could have been put toward another project. Law of diminishing returns would be applicable here.
The medium image is superb looking with lots of things to view and inspect. It looks very well processed. Great colour saturation and very nice detail in all the major spirals and despite my above opinion massive amounts of signal acquired. Without doubt a reason why mega data collection is a good thing, despite some critics thinking signal acquisition is ok for some and not for others.
When I went and looked at the high res version one on your site whilst it was smooth it had the appearance of being smoothed in some way. Maybe this is not the case but that is how it looks on my monitor. Some of my longer galaxy projects give this appearance if I apply some smoothing to the background. The stars also look a little odd, but those are very minor things compared to the overall effect of the image.
I suspected this was the region you were imaging that night we had that discussion many months ago of what you were imaging next. I spent a bit of time looking around and thought in the end this must have been your target.
I don't agree that this is a boring area at all. The differing types of galaxies present and the super nova remnant make for a very interesting looking image and well worth imaging.
In my opinion a very nice looking with loads of detail and interest. Certainly close to one of your best and worthy APOD should you obtain that. You have now inspired me to add this to my imaging list. Well done Rolf.
