My best Top hat!

[Garyh]

Hi everyone,
Had some very strange weather up this way lately. Everything from poor hazy conditions to some rather nice seeing and transparency. This was taken 2 days ago with the later and even with the moon in the sky, the MW was still bright and visible!
Image is of one of my favorites, M104 and after seeing Rich`s image I had to capture it again with my latest setup before I have to pack up the gear for storage. Image is 20 x 5 min with 5 DF and 8 flats and like usual stacking and calibration done in DSS and then finished of in PS CS. Slightly upscaled from original size so you can see it better..
Very happy with the final result. Even at 200% the image holds up well and detail in the dust lane and spiral structure is just showing through even at only 900mm FL.

Anyways thanks for looking and comments always welcome!
cheers Gary

[RB (Andrew)]

That's a wonderful image Gary !!
I love how you always manage to tease out the star colours and detail while still controlling the noise so well.

Excellent work mate.

[Deeno]

Fantastic.
Great image scale

[RobF (Rob)]

Wow and Wow Gary. Love the Sombrero too, and that's a great effort.
(curse your dark skies and even better processing re star colours! )

Oops - jealousy under control again now.....!

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Wow, lovely shot Gary.

[iceman (Mike)]

Beautiful, nice to see M104 back. Lovely galaxy image.

[Garyh]

Thanks Andrew, Deeno, Rob, Paul and mike! Quiet pleased with the final outcome! But looking at Richard`s M104, I have to work a little bit more on the color balance. I think my last M104 also looked a bit red as well? Maybe a modded DSLR thing?
cheers and CS
Gary

[bluescope]

Good one Gary !

[multiweb (Marc)]

Very nice. Some good details in there.

[spearo (Frank)]

good shot
can nicely see the detail inside
well done
frank

[anthony.tony]

Lovely.

[dugnsuz (Doug)]

Fantastic image Gary - love the detail and star colours.
Those 3 bright stars on the right remind of backing singers for some bizarre reason!!!
Top work!
Doug

[Bassnut (Fred)]

OK, yes thats nice Gary, has the floating in space thing going there. Slightly wonky guiding tho, more detail would jump out if that was fixed.

[richardo (Rich)]

Hi Gary,
this worked out very well for sure.
Picking up some nice detail. Not easy as we know!
Yeah, colour might be a bit off though as you mentioned in your reply to my rendition.
Bit too much magenta.. about the periphery. Says me with a slight magenta halo :0/


Amazing what you've got with your dslr and this hard to get detail on object I reckon!

Thanks for sharing and comparing.
All the best
Rich

[Garyh]

Thanks Steve,Marc, Frank, Tony, Doug, Fred and Rich!

Good pickup Fred! Not really noticeable at full size but shows when you go up to 150-200%. Some more fine tuning with PHD?
Now fixed that magenta tint to M104 and done a few other touchups.
Looks like another clear night tonight
Buggered but lovin it!
cheers Gary

[jase (Jason)]

Pleased I didn't miss this one Gary. Really nice work. Well done.