the cyclone season has started

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Here's a LRGB composite of NGC 2997 from my backyard in Perth, with the trusty 10" starfinder, QSI683wsg on a G11. Processing in pixinsight.
Had some real problems with the calibrations - maybe it's the light pollution but I acquired 3 sets of flats at dusk, and none of them worked very well.
Subs are 5 minutes each, and I got 16 each for the colour channels and 32 for luminance.
Higher res version on astrobin here:
http://www.astrobin.com/156919/
cheers, and thanks for looking.
Andrew.

[Ross G]

Great looking galaxy photo Andrew.

Nice colours and I like the composition.

Ross.

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

I think it worked rather well.

[multiweb (Marc)]

+1 Pretty galaxy. Good rendition.

[alistairsam]

Thats a neat looking galaxy and it looks great. Star colours are really nice. need to look up how high this gets from here.

Cheers
Alistair

[andyc (Andy)]

Appropriately named for this week! And a very nice image too, one of my favourite galaxies.

[gregbradley]

One of my favourite galaxies. Quite well done. As with all images it would improve with more total exposure time but as it is its a nice image.

Greg.

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

One of my favourite galaxies. Quite well done. As with all images it would improve with more total exposure time but as it is its a nice image.

Greg.

Thanks Greg. One of the many drawbacks of not having a permanent setup is having to schedule imaging sessions around days we're allowed use our bores to water the lawn. Hopefully that will all change soon and I can join the megadata club.

Originally Posted by andyc

Appropriately named for this week! And a very nice image too, one of my favourite galaxies.

Thanks Andy - I love this thing visually, it's such a casual, laid back kind of spiral :-)

Originally Posted by alistairsam

Thats a neat looking galaxy and it looks great. Star colours are really nice. need to look up how high this gets from here.
Cheers
Alistair

Thanks Alistair!
Probably about zenith at the moment for you (if you are in Nth Vic) it's declination is -31.

Originally Posted by multiweb

+1 Pretty galaxy. Good rendition.

Originally Posted by Placidus

I think it worked rather well.

Originally Posted by Ross G

Great looking galaxy photo Andrew.

Nice colours and I like the composition.

Ross.

Thanks Marc, Mike and Ross !

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Good result Andrew, it's a really nice galaxy that one

Mike

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Good result Andrew, it's a really nice galaxy that one

Mike

Thanks Mike! I love going after galaxies, but with my image scale and seeing I'm running out of decently large candidates! At least Virgo and Leo are on the way up.
Cheers
Andrew

[RickS (Rick)]

Nice one, Andrew! Probably hard to do better without a dark site where you can do longer subs.

Cheers,
Rick.

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Originally Posted by RickS

Nice one, Andrew! Probably hard to do better without a dark site where you can do longer subs.

Cheers,
Rick.

Thanks Rick. That's a very interesting point too. Normally I get 10 minute subs and there's no doubt it's easier to deal with light pollution and calibration seems to work better. I think it's because most of the signal ends up in the same part of the histogram as the flats. Problem is retaining star colour with 8086 chip. This was a partially successful experiment to find a compromise - but I think I need to revert to two sets of subs, one for stars and one for object.
Cheers,
Andrew