NGC 5566 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo, which is approximately 65 million (see below) light years away from Earth. The galaxy is the biggest in Virgo, stretching nearly 150,000 Light Years in diameter. The galaxy NGC 5566 was discovered on 30 April 1786 by the German-British astronomer William Herschel. [Source: Wikipedia]

The image features a trio of interacting galaxies almost 90 million (see above) light-years away. On the right, two large foreground Milky Way stars echo the trio galaxy hues, a reminder that stars in our own galaxy are like those in the distant island universes. Predominately yellow, with sweeping spiral arms and dust lanes, NGC 5566 is enormous, about 150,000 light-years across. Just above left lies small, blue NGC 5569. To the upper right, the third galaxy, NGC 5560, is multicolored and apparently stretched and distorted by its interaction with NGC 5566. Such cosmic interactions are now appreciated as a common part of the evolution of galaxies. [Source: APOD]

The image was captured with the Meade 12"LX200, with first use of the replacement Atik 383L+m. Reduction was at F6.56 (I had removed the 7.5mm spacer between EFW2 and OAG5).

Filters used -- Astronomik's L, R, G, B.

All L subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 10 minutes each.

All R, G and B subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 5 minutes each.

L: 68 subs (11.33 hr) on June 27th, July 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th-10th, 18th, 24th, 27th, 29th, 31st and August 1st.

R: 17 subs (1.42hr) on July 8th.

G: 15 subs (1.25hr) on July 9th.

B: 21 subs (1.75hr) on July 10th.

Processing was done with PixInsight, following (for the most part) best practices up to now. Luminance was processed to bring out detail. R, G and B were combined and blurred. Then Luminance (L) was added to the combined RGB.

North is up. This is a nominal crop; images continue to be plagued by vignetting. Background is still mottled. But darkening background also reduces galaxy brightness, especially faint detail. The image has benefitted from more L integration, but not as much as I had hoped when I originally posted on July 12th .