Fuzzies! And NGC891...

[Ibbo!]

that is stunning

well worth a couple or three runs through the full size image

Steve

[dave_galera]

Brillaint image Olly, balance and clarity is perfect.

Dave

[ollypenrice]

Great image olly but how the heck do you get your blacks that black is it down to the sky quality? Mine tend to be grayish rather than black

When you say 'black' we need to be careful. You can easily have a black background simply by clipping all the faint data, but this looks awful. I aim for a background sky with a brightness reading of around 23 in all three colour channels, using the colour sampler tool in Photoshop to check. This is not a hard and fast rule because the object and star colours seen against the background affect our perception of it, so I'll lift the background blues, maybe, or the reds or even the greens very occasionally. But 23/23/23 is a good starting point. As the much-missed Dennis said, 'It isn't the histogram you hang on the wall.' Look at the picture. Keep checking it against a jet black frame in your processing window. This is a good reference point. 

How to get a nice 23/23/23? Four main things. 1) Image from a very dark site. (Sorry, but it really is true!) 2) Pay careful attention to flat fielding. 3) Use Dynamic Background Extraction in Pixinsight as your first processing step and then apply SCNR green. 4) Go right through the processing to the very end with a background value higher than 23/23/23. Leave a bit of extra space to the left of the histogram pedestal because you never know when you'll need it. This, believe me, is good advice. The final clip has to be the last thing you do.

One more related thing; avoid like the plague any increase in sharpening or saturation as applied to the background sky. It must be excluded from such processes. If you don't you'll simply add to your difficulties.

Olly

PS I'm touched by the kind reaction to this image which is not, from the outset, a terribly ambitious one but it's one I do rather like. Galaxies - when we think about it - aren't they amazing?

[fwm891]

Great Image. Great advice. Great master.

[Tom OD]

Another beauty, and I did not realise how many other fuzzies were so close to this object.

[Martin-Devon]

Yep, scanning through the full size image is just amazing - a truly superb image.

Martin

[Uranium235]

Well worth viewing the fullsize version, lots to be seen. Hmmmm.... this gives me an idea for gakaxy season

[woland]

What an amazing picture! Beautiful stars and colours.. and those galaxies.. so many of them.. amazing.

[jaspalchadha]

blumming amazing . I want the Atik 11000 but cant decide

[kirkster501]

A most spectacular image indeed.  Wonderful.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Lovely image. Needs a title - how about Les Grange Deep Field?