Here is a target that I really, really enjoyed shooting! I collaborated on this project with my dad at the 2016 WSP and we were able to make the most of a couple of decent days. He collected almost half of our 100+ lum frames with his TEC 140 and STT 8300 which really helped the resolution of the galaxy while I collected the other half with the FSQ 85 to get the most out of the tidal tail. The data was quite good but still incredibly difficult to process. The tidal tail is as faint as any dim nebula I've shot, so bringing that out was a real challenge while not destroying the stars and galaxy. The more challenging part of the process was the impossibly bright Algieba, a 2nd magnitude star. It overwhelmed the field with it's glow. Additionally, some of the earlier framing had to be changed do to it sharting on the beautiful galaxy pair... see here (
https://www.flickr.com/photos/89595690@N08/24468478404/in/dateposted-public/ )
In the end though, I'm quite pleased with the results of this stunning galaxy pair as well as the countless very structured galaxies filling this field. I will follow up with another annotated version that blows up some of the smaller background galaxies including another colliding pair with their own galaxy tails.
As always, thanks for looking and C&C's are more than welcome!
version B: brightened tail at expense of some noise
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