Low in our evening sky, I have not spent much time photographing the many galaxies of Cetus because of typically poor seeing and bright skyglow from Payson. This 12.3 magnitude SAS6 face on spiral is small at 3.6x2.5 arcmins, yet boasts beautifully blue arms with hints of small hydrogen clouds in the upper arm at the limit of resolution. (which tonight was 2.2 FMHW) About a third of the faint "stars" in this image are galaxies, most notably the 18th magnitude reddish elliptical to its upper right.

I will soon be posting a companion image, which had numerous "surpise" objects in it...

Processing: Calibration with dark, and flat, subexposures summed in Maxim DL, very mild DDP with no sharpening, 5 iterations of RL deconvolution HF components. LRGB combined in Photoshop in LAB color mode.

Left: Click on this thumbnail to see the surprise I had when shooting this object!

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG ST7E w/Enhanced Cooling
Exposure:  LRGB = 60:20:20:40 (RGB Binned 2x2)
Filters:  RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FMHW = 2.2 arcsec, Transparency 6/10
Outside Temperature:  0 C
CCD Temperature:  -35 C
Processing:  Maxim DL, Photoshop, AIP4WIN, PW Pro.