The Many Galaxies of Virgo

[powerlord]

Shot over 2 nights - this is a 4 panel mosaic in RGB and Ha. Shot with my Redcat and asi2600a. Ha with Ultimate filter.

And, I admit just by pure luck, I managed to catch a comet too !

It was a bit of a [removed word] to process, as it's 90mp worth. So all panels individually stacked, then mosaic joined in APP, then processed in Siril and then into Affinity photo for starX, noiseX, compositing in the Ha.

It's about 8 hours in total  - 1 hour per panel RGB, 1 hour Ha.

Edited and cropped down, it's still 60mp so probably well worth the clicky dance. There really is a lot of galaxies in there. It boggles the mind to think of each of of those being billions of stars and planets.

<edited to remove Ha as not adding anything - thanks Olly>

Also, added annotations showing all the galaxies

Annotated:

Edited January 22 by powerlord

[ollypenrice]

Lots of very old galaxies there! Nice. Why shoot Ha on this? Most of the galaxies are ellipticals so have no star-forming regions and I'd have thought the spirals would be too small to allow such regions to be resolved at this FL? Did you find it added much?

Olly

[powerlord]

yeh, I edited late last night and actually found myself thinking the same thing overnight - well not the techy bit about elliptical tbh - just the fact all I got was every galaxy in red with no real extra data. I'll re-edit and remove the Ha.

thanks

stu

[nitram100]

Incrdible pic!