[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Alchemy

nice image.

Thanks

Originally Posted by mark3d

very nice

Glad you liked it Mark

Originally Posted by Dennis

Wow Mike – that is one stunning image! I like very much indeed!

Thanks also for the crops showing the various regions of interest, this is truly a remarkable image of a fascinating area. Well worth the sleep deprivation!

Cheers

Dennis

In a field like this where there is only one or two smallish showcases it is nice to post the full frame size image so the incredible amount of background detail can be appreciated. On the right of the full frame image above centre there is an interacting pair of distant yellow galaxies one face on spiral and one edge on, this is really cool - see if you can fond them

Originally Posted by theodog

Stunning image Mike
Well done

Cheers oDog

Originally Posted by Tamtarn

Great image Mike. Thanks for posting the link for us to have a browse around. Lots of galaxies there and a satellite trail as well

I tend to leave satellite trails in if they don't go throug the middle of the image, they create a sense of human achievemnet since they are man made and are flying in front of light on its way to my telescope, for me to record, after a journey of millions or even billions of years !

Originally Posted by EzyStyles

beautiful just beautiful. the arms are so visible and heaps of details on the surface of the galaxy . i had a go at this but hardly capture the faint arms.

Hi Eric

I am very happy with the good compromise the Starfire provides in FL and image scale ie enough FL to grab details while still allowing for a reasonable FOV to frame more objects, the superb unobstructed optics help too It is incredible to think that in the 60's it took a deep plate on the 200" Hale telescope in California to reveal a grainy record of those arms, now we amateurs can grab them clearly and from our backyards with a 6" scope . I would have liked to get more data on this region to bring out the arms even better but I ran out of imaging time in gathering the 4 hrs worth I did manage. It's a pain having to get the seperate R G B & Lum and do flats after each filter, re focus every 30min etc to get 4 hrs of quality data takes about 5 - 6 hours really. If the positioning of the camera at the end of the telescope is favourable the NJP can go nearly 2 hrs past the meridian. 4 hrs of total data is about as long as I can go if I don't want to start with the object too low in the sky. If I do the R G B first I get gradients that are hard to deal with as each filter is shooting through gradually changing sky brightnesses. In this case I wanted maximum detail so decided to do the R G B first anyway and then collect the Lum last when the region was highest above the horizon. This region passes almost through the Zenith so the 2 hrs of Lum were gathered in quite good seeing (FWHM = approx 1" - 2")

Originally Posted by astro_south

Great image Mike - just love surfing around a detailed full frame like this one and hunting down the galaxies.

I noticed up the top some potential movement between colour frames (red and blue) - some possible asteroids? Doesn't look like any flare. I have attached a crop of the area. By the colour changes it appears they (whatever they are) are moving in opposite directions too!

Yes I love galaxy surfing wide field deep images, the plethora of distant background galaxies really brings home my insignificance.

No the colour dots are just due to the fact that there was image shift between each filter, each set of dots represents an uncorrected hot pixel. I was on Red for nearly and hour then Green for an hour then Blue for an hour and in that time there is image drift so when the frames are aligned the hot pixels appear in different spots for each colour frame.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Beauty Mike - nice one to hunt around in! It would be reeeeeally nice if was just a little deeper though. What length subs did you use?

Cheers, Marcus

See post to Eric above - just not enough time in one night and without a permanent setup I can't be stuffed doing multiple nights on the one object, particularly since I prefer to avoid meridian flips (too complicated for me). I would love to do multiple many hour compilations though one day when I have an observatory again. I try to drag as much out of my limited data it's true, so I tend to push the noise envelope a bit I know. I prefer to avoid noise reduction software as it always loses detail so I try to find a happy medium between creating processing induced noise and revealing faint features. Se la vi.....Oh I am still using 10min subs, I have a set of five 10min subs I took back in Sept at -35C so I keep sticking to 10min (and -35C) so I can use these in my image reduction (Lazy?). I have found that 10min is ok though for most things and I still get the occasional stuff up or tracking glitch so 10min is an acceptable time to lose in a weather environment where I may lose the night altogether and time is precious - it seems to be a happy medium so far?