This is one of the worst galaxy images on this website. As mentioned above it was the first galaxy photo I took with this particular scope and as such it suffers badly from my inexperience.

First, the stars aren't even close to being round. And the whole image is either too black or too gritty. The galaxy has more processing artifacts than details. And the list goes on. I've since learned that most of the the faults in this image were caused by poor tracking, too few exposures and poor processing techniques, all of which I've now either solved or miminized down to an acceptable level.

But in spite of all the flaws, this image does actually show the galaxy. It brings out the spiral arms, the core is not too bad and it gives you a general idea as to the color, brigthness and shape of the object. It was also an inspiration because, up until then I was having great difficulty getting the smaller galaxies to even show up, let alone jump out like this one did.

So it stays on the site until I do a better one. (Update: There is now a better photo, but the galaxy is much smaller in it. See below for details).