M106 Core - Luminance

Hi all. I decided to try a shot of the M106 core at higher magnification. I used my Takahashi CN212 at F/9.9. This image was reduced to 67% of original. The light pollution was too overpowering to get any of the outer arms, but the core turned out OK. Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Tyler

Attached Image:

You did an excellent job Tyler. Looks almost 3D .Try to trace around the fainter arms with the lasso tool in photosop, then you can take care of the gradients and bring out the faint spiral arms.

Lots of detail, Tyler. If either of us ever get some color frames maybe we could both add them to our shots.

I woke up at 1:00 am this morning to a crystal clear night with fairly steady seeing. M106 had crossed the meridian so I open the observatory, got everything working just right by 1:30 and started a three hour sequence of ten minute color subs in MaximDL. Life was good so I went to bed then woke up at 4:00 am to find that winXP updated my clock for daylight savings time at 2:00 and somehow shut my script OFF!!!! I got one ten minute sub each of RGB. Ya gotta' love automated astrophotography :C

Nice shot - Cal

Tyler,
Seems like both you and Cal got some good luminance captures - Congrats to both of you.

I still think you leave some object detail on the table so to speak. Seems like you are processing to gamma standard less than what might be considered typical. (Although I conceed, my monitor may be a bit on the dark side.)

I look forward to seeing the color version from both you and Cal - here's hoping for some clear skies.