Hurrah, most things went right!

[rickwayne]

Last night was one of those magical ones -- clear, still, warm, great seeing, not much moon. There were swarms of gnats early in the evening so I spent less time than I would have liked outside listening to the cows and the coyotes. Was sleeping in the back of the Subaru when the farmer across the road woke me up working his fields at 2 AM. (It's been a terrible spring here, a lot of folks haven't managed to get their corn in.)

42 x 120" on the Stellarvue, ZWO Ha filter, ASI 183MM Pro. Processed in Astro Pixel Processor and then tonally tweaked, denoised, and further sharpened in Photoshop. Full res on Astrobin if you're inclined.

[Stargazer33]

Congrats on your near perfect night and your impressive result.

[rickwayne]

Thanks. This is the first one I've gotten where I feel like I'm actually getting some use out of those 20 million little, little pixels on the 183. Focus and guiding errors kinda smeared out my previous efforts.

[rickwayne]

Which brought me to think: I have gone for this target before, haven't I? Sure enough, and actually less than a year ago.
Now, the image from which the left side was cropped was hardly my best of last year. Still. With all the frustration, it is nice to see a certain progression happening.