[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Dennis

Hi Mike

What a stunning portrait of this beautiful galaxy. The wide field setting is absolutely gorgeous. Everything looks spot on – you’ve done a terrific job despite the conditions and problems you’ve alluded to.

Thanks for the pre-breakfast intergalactic romp!

Cheers

Dennis

Glad it was such a cullinary entre big D, nothing like a pan galactic cirrus blaster for breaky

Originally Posted by Phil

Stunning shot well done.
Phil

Cheers Phil

Originally Posted by h0ughy

after the 5th look at this it is amazing how many faint fuzzies are in the background

I love what a largish field at good image scale can do under true dark skies, shame about the poor seeing and wind though as there would have been even more to look for

what can i say, it looks good, but i will wait for the repro...s to see if its your best

Oh I am sure this will be the case, I am not happy with it already

good to see you have had the opportunity to get out and do some more.

now that you are in a bright location homewise, are you considering doing some narrowband work?

Ahhhhh... image, my Kingdom to image

You got it Clive! Some narrowband filters are on the way soon but strangely I probably wont use'em where I am since my sky access is very limited regardless of the light pollution

Very nice Mike - top shot as always! Nice to scan around for the fuzzies.

I agree Markus this FOV under dark skies and viewed at full res is pretty cool

Buuut, for my taste at least, it's an teensy bit blue and the colour noise up close is a weensy bit too much as well. It's hard to judge on my crappy work LCD monitor though (only 6 bit I think) - it acts like an astro image defect exaggerator .

Ah yes I know...it's probably hard to make sense of in this age of super smooth imaging but as I have said before I think my previous experience with grainy film has desensitised me to fine scale image noise... ?

How long were your subs? I'll bet you had to do some serious stretching to reveal the cirrus?

I almost always use 10min subs, which at F7.5 and under dark skies seems to be ok and is a nice comprimise between risking dissapointment through subs being ruined by tracking error, satellite trails, wind gusts, equipment slipping etc etc and getting more signal each sub..when you are 100% portable and mizerly about your time it is really important to be mindful of these things I guess..?

Yes I did some stretching and with rather limited and softer data this time compared to Cen A, it was deffinitelly harder to extract the faint stuff and fine details without blowing out the noise too much..I tried but like you say... it "is" only my first attempt afterall huh?

Originally Posted by Garyh

Beautiful Mike! Love the closeup!
cheers Gary

Thanks Gary, I wonder what other versions I will come up with..?

Originally Posted by sjastro

Nice image Mike.

NGC 6744 is one of the most difficult objects to image.

Regards

Steven

Thanks very much Steve!

I agree 100%, NGC 6744 is indeed hard to nail. It does help to have good data though, 2 and a bit hrs Lum is not really enough here (had a bit more but many subs were lost to the prevailing conditions, a couple of rare equipment problems and satellites), my deep Cen A image with 20hrs of data was much easier to work with.

Originally Posted by Tamtarn

Superb Mike. Such a beautiful field in the full res. Considering you had less than perfect conditions it's an amazing result.

Thanks Barb?..Dave? ok, both of ya, I was very surprised to get this much too, I can only imagine what good still steady skies would have revealed I think the dark skies helped atleast though.

Mike