The data for this field was collected during a recent clear stretch and is the data I collected for the Astrobin Community Survey.  This represents my first effort in contribution to this effort and as such I do not know if it will be acceptable for inclusion.  Kind of a test for me and my gear.  To be clear, the image presented here is not exactly what the acceptable format is for the survey.  Mostly, as a whole sky survey, the resolution presented here (~2.7" per pixel) is much more than the survey needs, nor can handle in its vastness.  My resolution here is achieved through dithering and 2X drizzle in the preprocessing.  Given my location and weather patterns, I suspect that most of my contributions will be of the vastness of space between the exciting areas of the Milky Way until the summer MW gets in better position. 

The travel rig is nearing completion.  Not the photo rig (which is set now), but the vehicle, power, and sleeping considerations.  With that, it is my hope to drive over to south central Oregon and practice this art in the World's newest and largest dark sky sanctuary.  Eastern Oregon is vast and this sanctuary looks small compared to the proposed expansion of the sanctuary, which will more than triple the square miles of the newly established sanctuary.  My challenge is to find a driveable area to set up in peace.  At Bortle 1, this will drop my acquisition time down from 4 hours (in my Bortle 4 backyard) down to 1 hr per field.  This will be a big help in the number of fields/night captured, the processing power required for each and allow me to do additional imaging with my other rig.  

For this image, I cherry picked this field because of its position in the sky for my location.  Yet it also has a good number of nice objects.  Most are galaxies of various types and degrees of disruption.  I processed to highlight these a bit.  In fact, NGC3718 is one of my favorite galaxies and surprisingly it shows up pretty darn good at this low resolution and large FOV.  Typically it is only shown in high focal length closeups.  I even have data with my 12 inch, that used my small planetary camera to try to tease as much as I could from it, but have not processed that data since it looks like garbage.  So now, here, you get to see it with all of its neighbors!  Same for M97, the Owl planetary nebula.  Very distinctive in closeup.  Mostly distinctive with its blue color prominent with a little fringe of red in places along its rim.  This version only slightly detects some extended nebulosity around M97 that can be seen in a stronger stretch.  Only a moderate reduction of star brightness here.  I do not think I have really lost any stars and the thousands of PGC galaxies that plate solve are also still there as tiny dots.  SXT normally removes these with the stars, thereby becoming fodder for the Blanshan star reduction algorithm.

If I find myself continuing with the Survey in the coming months, I expect that I may well post some of the fields that I collect.  But I also suspect that many will not be of particular interest.