At last, some clear sky.
36 hours exposure on the Grus spiral trio, over 4 consecutive nights, processed to show as many as possible of the myriad of background galaxies, many of whom, as the police would say, have form.
We counted some 273 definites. It's easy to spot even extraordinarily small and distant edge-on spirals because of their shape, easy to spot giant ellipticals because they are very red and fluffy. But smaller ellipticals are harder to tell from stars. Arguing statistically that they should outnumber the spirals, we think there could easily be several hundred smaller ellipticals and face-on spirals that are in the photo but unrecognized.
There are also a small number of Magellanic type galaxies in the shot that are very faint but identifiable because of their blue granular appearance.
Lum: 18 x 1 hour unbinned. RGB: each channel 6 x 1 hour unbinned. Field 36' arc across. (Thumbnail is a crop of about half that).
Aspen CG16M at -30C on 20" PlaneWave CDK on MI-750 mount. Scope and camera control software and image processing software written by Mike.
Original image here.
Hope you like it and thanks for looking.