[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

That's fantastic Mike.

The top part of the jet is particularly well represented. There is a wonderful subtle red stream going through the blue bits as well.

I wonder what process is occurring to form such a jet so far from the actual merging area?

Greg.

Thanks muchly Greg. The outermost part of the jet, essentially touching the top of image, is especially intriguing, and we hope to eventually tease it out better with more exposure. My understanding is that the jet is produced by the central supermassive black hole, and is unrelated to the collision. Quasars are where much more violent jets in very distant galaxies are pointing straight at us. This one is so special because it is so close, and we can see the jet even though it's not pointed straight at us.

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

I have to say the image looks a little soft to me, but has great depth.

Nice burger...with the lot!

Hi, Peter. I'm guessing that by soft you mean lack of local contrast, most noticeably in the dust streaks, rather than FWHM. We think the fainter stars are very tight, but the dust detail is nowhere near as contrasty as in your image. Am I right? Glad you like the depth. (Never mind the quality, feel the width, as the tailor said). It's only a single night each of L and RGB (we're trying to get more L tonight but cloud is predicted later), but we're seeing real-looking stuff in the upper part of the jet that we've not seen before.

Originally Posted by alpal

Hi Mike & Trish,
That's a great effort.
I thought that it could be sharpened a bit more
so I tried it & you seemed to have hit the limit for a global sharpen.
Therefore I tried some blurred layer mask sharpening in various areas -
as per Ken Crawford's "digging out the details" video -
because they could be sharpened a bit more but not the whole picture.
I hope you don't mind - I attach a small area that I worked on?
The difference is only tiny & some people may not even notice it.
Do you think it's worthwhile?

cheers
Allan

Thanks Allan, that is very kind of you and we're delighted for you to experiment. Your right hand thumbnail is very noticeably more contrasty than the left. Shows that more can be done.

Best,
Mike