[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by Placidus

Beautiful. A cracker. Top shelf.

The spiral arms show large and convincing but super-faint extensions. The pattern in the spiral arms is also very interesting - like two layers of cloud moving in different directions.

Beautifully handled colour saturation and background too.

thanks very much M & T. You are right, the patterns do look like cloud layers - amazing that similar physics seems to apply to both stars and molecules.

Originally Posted by RickS

Great detail and colour, Ray! There aren't many images of this puppy around but even if there were I'm sure yours would still be one of the best.

Cheers,
Rick.

thanks Rick - I couldn't find many other images either, not sure why..

Originally Posted by codemonkey

Nice one, Ray!

thanks very much Lee.

Originally Posted by Slawomir

What a pleasant image to look at! Pure joy for the eyes!

10/10 from me, awesome work Ray

that's very generous Slawomir - thanks.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

A lovely crisp image Ray! Plenty of faint fuzzies to warrant a close up inspection too. Colours spot on as always!

Cheers, Marcus

thanks very much Marcus. I love it that modern imaging gear can pick up the faint background fuzzies - pity we cannot get more resolution on some of them.

Originally Posted by PRejto

Hi Ray,

Really nice image in all ways! Do I assume (or have forgotten??) that you image from a fairly dark site? May I ask what your integration and sub frame times were? I'm starting to "loathe" my imaging location! I spend 90% of my time trying to restore data from the horrors of LP.... Anyway, your usual great work on a very pretty subject.

Peter

thanks Peter. My site is in the middle of a small country town and I have two streetlights illuminating my obs and sodium site lights at a nearby dolomite crushing plant and grain loading terminal. The sky is not really dark unless the atmosphere is very clear and under the best conditions it can get down to about one mag brighter than full dark (estimated). I don't bother trying to image below ~50 degrees above the horizon, to keep out of the worst LP.
I don't have my imaging computer with me and will post details when I get back to it - from memory, about 70 lum at 5 minutes 1x1 and maybe 2.5 hours each of the colours at 2x2 binning with 180 sec G and R subs and 300 sec B.

Originally Posted by astroron

A very nice image Ray.
I had not observed this galaxy before,your image prompted
me to observe it tonight with my 16" and a 6mm radian.
It has a very bright center which seems off set.
Takes magnification well.
Foreground stars to 13.6 mag seen.
Thanks Ray.
Cheers

thanks for that Ron. I haven't looked through a scope for a while - maybe I should.

Originally Posted by stevous67

Ray,

You continually provide us first class images, from capture through to processing - well done.

Steve

thanks very much Steve - appreciated.

regards Ray