[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Originally Posted by Bassnut

wow, that fair jumps out of the screen Marc, outstanding, and some nice neb extention too.

There is a pretty savage cutoff from outer neb to background tho, although the histogram looks OK.

Thanks Fred. Yes, the cutoff is severe - I don't like it much either - but the signal for the outer neb is pretty low and stretching it more made it look even more artificial. I'll try a few other tricks to see if I can improve it.

Originally Posted by CoolhandJo

Amazing detail. Long exposure time sure paid off.

Thanks Paul! It took me 3 nights to gather that much data - it wasn't rising until 19:30ish so I could only start imaging at around 22:00.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Excellent effort Marcus, looks awesome and quite dramatic!
No meaningful tweaks necessary as far as I can see..? The dark sky actually looks good IMO (wha tha?? did I say that?? shock horror)

I have fond meories of this baby and yours looks very similar to the one I did a few years back

Jealous of your new found free time too or what?? ... I'm not that keen on sleeping in my freezing car between image capture sets either

Mike

Thanks a lot Mike! And yes, dark skies rule! ... and very surprised to hear you say that - you master of the blue sky background you!

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Impinging image Marcus. Nice catch of the outer nebula.
The long hours pay off, quite dramatic.

I am at my dark site and so far 1 night out of 3 was clear.

I also have a Q extender 1.6X and an adapter to use on with
my Microline. Have to check out how it works if I get some
more sky.

Greg.

Thanks Greg - as you'd know this object needs lots of data at the best of times - and I was operating at F11.7!

I think I average only 5-10% clear moonless nights around here. I got an amazing 4 consecutive clear nights for this shot and I stuffed up the first one with comms probs with the camera (silly me - I added a short 15cm USB extension to the camera USB cable to reach the laptop on a new shelf - my bad - the extra length screwed up the USB timing I think).

Originally Posted by Craig_L

Very nice Marcus. The largest arm of neb extension I think I've seen.

Thanks Craig. There are a couple of other shots that show it (see an APOD in 2007, Rob Gendlers version and of course Strongman's version). Like Mike I really went to town on my version and exaggerated it as much as possible.

Cheers, Marcus