With clear nights with no Moon, work or family commitments getting in the road
not exactly in abundance..aaand being inherently laaazy
...I decided to move away from tiny planetary nebs and shoot something I could nab reasonably well in a single night..and I just managed to squeeeeze this in one
So to get the annual NGC 6744 season rolling... here she is
As most would know this galaxy has a rather low surface brightness, especially those outer really faint arms that spread a fair way out from the main body of the galaxy so, as always, I tried to reveal as much as possible while keeping the relative brightnesses accurate with global stretching only.
The Pavo Galaxy
A higher contrast stretch of the over 6hrs of Luminance data shows the extent of the very faintest outer spiral arms and details and even some very faint Milky Way cirrus dust.
Close up study of the core reveals the inner dust lane goes right to the very bright core
Mike