Deep Antennae galaxies

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by N1

Been looking forward to something like this coming from the new obsy. Great shot and effort Mike thanks for sharing.

Thanks Mirko, I was too Hey, if the El Nino intensifies I should be able to do more shoots like this...until all the resulting extra-dried out undergrowth, causes the wild fires to start again aaaand all the accompanying smoke......

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Nice shot Mike. I like the colour balance but maybe it looks a little fluro like others have said. It's mainly in the reds and magentas to me. The blues look good and star colours look nice to me. Background looks an even charcoal too.

Thanks Paul. I'm hear'n ya but the unease with the appearence of the red/magenta, is kinda ironic because Ha emission is in fact a perfect example of fluro ie. Fluorescence

Originally Posted by Dave882

Stunning capture Mike! So much detail it’s truely breathtaking. This is such a fascinating target and you’ve showcased it beautifully!

Thanks so much Dave, I think it came together ok too

Cheers all

Mike

[aandk]

That's wonderful

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by aandk

That's wonderful

Cheers (I'm going to go with you being the "a" in aandk)

Mike

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Nice detail in the galaxies Mike. For me the tidal tails are a little too strong—after all in reality they should be really faint in comparison with the the galaxies

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Geoff45

Nice detail in the galaxies Mike. For me the tidal tails are a little too strong—after all in reality they should be really faint in comparison with the the galaxies

Thanks Geoff, for the feedback and while I think I know what you are getting at (ie. respecting the light?) and besides not looking as good then .. I have to kinda disagree anyway. The famous ansae are in fact actually surprisingly bright, at least compared to other faint outer regions of popularly imaged galaxies . I also did no separate specific lassoing etc to artificially brighten the tails (like I suspect many others have done on this pair), this is their stretched relative brightness using the deep data set and you can see this in the enhance luminance version, which is a stretched and curves version of the otherwise unaltered raw Lum data. It is very, almost universally, common in processing to try and reveal the outer very faint arms of a spiral galaxy for example, think NGC 1566, NGC 1300 et al heck even M42 and the Keyhole area etc by using similar stretching techniques...so I'm not sure why you think this is an issue with this galaxy? I did try and keep the two interacting galaxies less bright, purely to better reveal the inner fine details, which granted, in the perfect World would be even brighter but we would lose all that glorious fine inner detail ...it's a balancing act in the end...but again, I do appreciate your thoughts

Mike