NGC 7205 in Indus, on a night of for us exceptional seeing, approaching 1.5 sec arc around midnight.
The main galaxy itself is pretty, but we've counted at least 180 other galaxies in the field, definitely our personal best.
We inspected the image visually, and classified anything with very clear galactic morphology - e.g. an edge-on spiral or visible spiral arms, as a galaxy. A handful of big salmon blobs that were too big and too faint to be stars (compared with nearby stars) were classed as almost certain ellipticals.
We kinda get the feeling that extra hours won't find so many more. It was the good seeing allowing the identification of the morphology that did the trick. A longer exposure on a night with poor seeing would reveal fewer, not more.
We collected 6hrs of colour on a separate night. The colour helped confirm the galaxies previously identified based on the luminance image, because the smaller ones tended to be strikingly orange. There is an obvious cluster of orange ellipticals about two thirds of the way toward top right, and another about one third of the way toward 9 o'clock. We've only marked some of these, as the rest are only inferred from context and not counted in the tally.
Hope you enjoy hunting around the original image, where the shape of the smallest edge-on spirals is more obvious.
Aspen CG16M on 20" PlaneWave. Processing using our GoodLook 64.
Yep seeing is everything Lovely result guys, certainly a veritable galaxy smorgasbord alright! Love the smaller of the bright spirals and that distant cluster of yellow elliptical galaxies, very cool, nice work
Two galaxy diameters left and slightly down from the larger spiral there is an elliptical (?) galaxy with what looks like a horizontal plume extending to the right, looks real rather than a processing artifact, whada ya recon?
Yep seeing is everything Lovely result guys, certainly a veritable galaxy smorgasbord alright! Love the smaller of the bright spirals and that distant cluster of yellow elliptical galaxies, very cool, nice work
Mike
Thanks muchly, Mike!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmos
Utterly brilliant MnT! Such a lovely field, the galaxy clusters really top it off
Thank you Colin. The galaxy clusters were an unexpected bonus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marc4darkskies
Wow! What a treat! Very cool image M&T!!
Thanks indeed, Marcus. We were very lucky with the weather.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevec35
Very pretty image guys. Well done.
Cheers
Steve
Thanks Steve. Glad you like it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Two galaxy diameters left and slightly down from the larger spiral there is an elliptical (?) galaxy with what looks like a horizontal plume extending to the right, looks real rather than a processing artifact, whada ya recon?
Mike
Yes, we can see that. A quite broad and rather long but very faint smear to the right. Perhaps some poor galaxy has been shredded, and pulled into the elliptical. No luck at all finding something to compare that part of the image with as yet.
Sorry for late reply chaps, intermittent computer issues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Regulus
Apart from the great detail, it's just a beautiful photo.
Well done.
Trev
Quote:
Originally Posted by leon
That is just, Wow, a beautiful imaging result.
Leon
Thanks, Leon and Trevor. The scope and mount are behaving well. I suspect I've finally gotten a decent workflow with processing too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
A pox on the CDK!
Damn your dark skies!
(Yes, of course I *really* like this image.....)
Thanks Peter! We're very tickled that you like it.
The dark sky certainly helps. We've been watching anxiously as the Cadia gold mine at Lucknow near Orange has been upgraded with huge output of light, and huge building of new housing for the miners. The infrastructure boom is all over now, and the sky toward Orange seems no worse than it was.
Lovely result guys, certainly a veritable galaxy smorgasbord alright! Love the smaller of the bright spirals and that distant cluster of yellow elliptical galaxies, very cool, nice work 
