Here we've added 3.5 hours per channel RGB to our previous 7 hours of Lum. In addition, we've stretched it a tiny bit less, and done some more wavelet sharpening.
Big version here
Brightest detail: We've managed to preserve the 5 tiny star-forming regions in the very innermost core, though they're a bit less obvious in colour than in mono. These are often burned out in other images. We think of them swirling ominously close to the supermassive central black hole, flirting with destruction, and eventually making the mistake of dividing by zero.
Middle brightness detail in the spiral arms: Not so wonderful here. Love to blame the seeing. Colours seem about right. Long chains of bright blue star-forming regions. Sadly, a 15 minute test shot in 3x3 binned H-alpha showed nothing of interest - very different to say NGC 300, Barnard's, or the Sculptor semi-dwarf.
Faint outer ends of spiral arms: Kinda pleased with these. We're showing both foreground stars and star-forming regions aplenty in these outermost regions that are also not usually seen. For example, see the more or less isolated extension to the bottom left spiral arm where it wraps around past a clump of bright stars to about 5 to 6 o'clock. Also, have a shufti at the top right spiral arm, which also shows many bright blue knots of new stars. The inner edge here (say at 2 o'clock) looks scalloped, like a lettuce leaf, with two deep dark bays or notches, and an intervening brighter tooth pointing corewards. This region shows a very distinct sharp inner edge which is not so often seen.
L: 14 x 30 min subs, RGB: total of 21 x 30 min subs. Field approx 30 min arc, 0.55 sec arc/pixel. Aspen CG16M on 20" PlaneWave CDK. All processing using GoodLook 64.
Very best,
Mike and Trish