M81/M82 Galaxies in Ursa Major

Superb colour in there Dave!! Fantastic detail!!

Without bringing up this monitor issue again, but there is a background gradient across the image, especially in the lower left corner. Might be worth looking into for future reference.

Without bringing up this monitor issue again, but there is a background gradient across the image, especially in the lower left corner. Might be worth looking into for future reference.

I see this quite plainly also.

Without bringing up this monitor issue again, but there is a background gradient across the image, especially in the lower left corner. Might be worth looking into for future reference.

Michael, Thanks for mentioning this. Well there's a story here. I did some investigation and discovered that my monitor was set to 'MAC Mode' instead of 'PC Mode'. When I set the mode correctly I literally couldn't beleive my eyes. The gradient you mention is not just obvious it blimmin blinding!!! Then my heart sank!!! If this image is over stretched then so must many other shots in my gallery. I went and had a look and I nearly cried!! Gradients everywhere. Of course this means I now have to revistit almost every image I took and correct them.

Michael thanks for pointing this out. I am utterly mortified (but appreciative)!!

Michael/dave (et al),

I've now managed to adjust this image to make the background levels less 'intrusive'. I'd be grateful for your opinion. (You might need to hit F5 to refresh to the latest version of the image, as the old one might be in your browsers cache).

NOW, THAT IS ALOT BETTER !!!!
We've been saying this for the past year Dave.
The 2 galaxies appear to be just floating in space, pure magic !

There is very slight graininess around the extreme outer edges of the galaxies but I presume that this is a pure signal to noise ratio issue. Not much you can do about that except take longer exposures.

Michael, Thanks for mentioning this. Well there's a story here. I did some investigation and discovered that my monitor was set to 'MAC Mode' instead of 'PC Mode'.

Ah yea, blame the macs...that's more of it!

And yes, the updated image is far better! I always felt the background gradients that you couldn't see didn't do your hard work any justice. I'm delighted for you that you have this resolved.
Now that you have some spare time over Christmas, you'll have to revisit the back catalog"!