M 106 + NGC 4217 ultra widefield + closeup (please excuse the dust bunnies)

[Paramount]

Hi all
I wasn't really sure about posting this one but here goes, it was taken after the M51 ultra widefield that I took last Wednesday just before it got light. I had just got the right extension tube from APM so I could try out the matched field flattener for my TMB and Starlight Xpress H36, these are the first shots that I have done without having to crop the image due to severe vignetting. As I am waiting for custom adapters to put my filter wheel in this setup these images are completely unfiltered so they suffered somewhat from light pollution which I managed to get rid of most of it with gradient xterminator. As I haven't got into flat frames yet there are some dust bunnies which are evident depending on your monitor settings, they are not that evident on mine. I only managed 30x2 minutes unguided on this subject before it got too light so effectively this image was taken between 3am and 4am. Anyway enough of the excuses. While there are a lot of faults in the image I was pleased to capture some of the other faint fuzzies in the neighbourhood in particular NGC 4217 to the left of M106 which came out even better on the cropped image (no extra processing done on this, just cropped and enlarged). For the rest of the image no curves were used, just a bit on levels, some contrast enhancement and major work with Gradient Xterminator.
Thanks for looking and again my apologies for the dust bunnies
Kind regards and many clear nights
Gordon

[BT Technologies]

Beautiful image Gordon. You have captured an incredible amount of detail in the galaxies....

Well done!!

[markvcostello3]

It's interesting to view the additional galaxies in both the wide field and "close-up" photos. Nice job.