NGC 4603, NGC 4622, and at least 98 friends, finally in colour, after a battle.
Big image here.
Lum 17.5 hours in 30 min subs, RGB 7.5 hours each channel in 30 min subs. Aspen CG16M on 20" PlaneWave on MI-750 fork. Field 36 min arc, 0.55 sec arc/pixel. Processing GoodLook 64, and a buttery Hedberg chardonnay.
What we especially like: the huge mix of different kinds of galaxy, ranging from what looks like a small blue dwarf irregular galaxy at 6 o'clock, through the several big, image-dominating face-on spirals, some very tightly wound, some more like a Superman "S", to the absolute host of extremely distant orange-red ellipticals. The whole story all there in front of us.
We've tried to bring out the (actually fairly subtle) colours in the various different kinds of galaxy without going
too far over the top. A closely run thing, perhaps, but the biggest stars came out looking pretty.
The 17.5 hours of luminance gave us pretty good morphology on many of the small to medium-sized face-on and edge-on spirals in the far distance.
(Taking it was another story. Everything that could possibly go wrong did. Earth currents from a lightning strike just over the fence may have had something to do with it, but Sod's Corollary to Murphy's Law seems relevant. Dead computer. Replacement allegedly identical but needed new camera drivers for reasons unknown. Two power supplies failed, in different ways. A fan on one of the cameras failed. Roof position sensor touchy. Finally, fan on generator house exploded just as Trish started the generator. All working now, but for a while we were seriously considering gardening, sculpture, and knitting as hobbies.)