[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Humm... deep for sure, but sorry Greg the stars are and odd shape and the colour looks very flat...almost posterised on my monitor.

Something's not quite right in either the stacking or optical alignment or both is my guess.

But kudos for such a heroic deep field effort.

Thanks for the critique Peter.

Originally Posted by alpal

Hi Greg,
Is this the photo from Mike that you refer to?

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/97061387

Mike somehow captured more of the faint nebulosity of
the background as well as the galaxy.
You still have more resolution in the dust lanes.
I think you have a great picture but you may want
to have another go at re-processing it.
The problem is that when you have a 17" Planewave people expect a lot more -
maybe too much as the seeing conditions are the real limitation.

I only wish I had your kind of data to play with.

cheers
Allan

Yes that's the one.
To get that deep space halo will require ultra dark skies like I have at my dark site observatory. Unfortunately my CDK17 isn't a portable scope. It takes 2 people to mount it. Perhaps one time over the Christmas break when I would be there for a while it would be worth carting it down and setting it up. But in the meantime I have reasonably dark skies where I am and rely on gradient processing to get rid of most of the effects of the small amount of light pollution I get. My image is more about the dust lane and details that did come up well. The extended star halo may be a target for my APOs at my dark site. That extended halo isn't in the data to bring out as I looked for it. Seeing was variable during the imaging from some good nights to some average nights. That's a limitation we all face in imaging.
Like snow skiing, sometimes the snow isn't that great, other times its fabulous. Martin has shown how good the scope is on a remote mountain top with among world's best seeing. That's not my location though.

Originally Posted by allan gould

Greg,
27 hours for an image is totally heroic but I understand why when you are trying to get that faint detail that N5128 has in the background and it's outer shells. To me the colour looks great on my iPad and it's the sort that I want for my image but the clouds and rain are coming so it will be a while. From the suburbs of Brisbane I don't think I'll get that sort of colour saturation and subtleness especially with the moon at present.
But I'd love that scope of yours. Thanks for another great image.
Allan

Cheers Allan. I liked the level of detail that came out.

Greg.