I still can't get Sequence Generator Pro plate solving to work! I'm frustrated by this, but my gotos have been good enough, even after meridian flipping, that I've been able to find the target in my guider camera and re-center manually. I suspect the problem is probably is related to the non-square pixels of my cheap imaging camera, but I'll keep investigating because I really want to solve this. Anyway, I didn't get M106 framed quite right, but this is still a much better image than last year's effort, which came out way too yellow. This image suffered from some differential flexure. This was also my first attempt to use EQMOD AutoPEC. It seemed to help during the time I was watching, but I did have some strange RA oscillations toward the end of the run after I’d gone to bed.
Postscript: I think I just solved my plate solving problem! Suspecting the non-square pixels as the cause of the problem, I used the pixel size in microns from my camera and put in 8.3/8.6 = 0.965 as the PlateSolve2 aspect ratio parameter. Bingo! Plate solve succeeded on the 1st region. I look forward to trying this out tonight. I think I had actually tried this before, but I think I had it inverted and used 8.6/8.3.
Date: 1-2 Apr 2016
Subject: M106
Scope: AT8IN
Filter: Baader Planetarium UHC-S
Mount: EQ-6 (EQMOD) + AutoPEC
Guiding: Orion ST-80 + Antares 0.5x focal reducer + DSI Ic + PHD 2.6.1.1 (Win 7 ASCOM)
Camera: DSI IIc, no chiller CCD 9.5 °C
Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro 2.4.3.25 with Nebulosity 4.0.4 ASCOM camera driver
Exposure: 29x300 s
Stacking: Neb 4, bad pixel map, bias included, 33 flats, match histograms, trans+rot align, Deep Sky Stacker 1.5σ κ-σ stack without drizzle.
Processing: StarTools 1.4.305: Crop; Wipe; Develop: 82.93%; HDR
ptimize; Color:Scientific, 249% saturation; Deconvolute: 2.8 pix; Track: Smoothness 75%, 4.5 pix; Magic, shrink 1 pix. Photoshop CS6 + Astronomy Tools: Deep space noise reduction; Increase star color; layer-masked local contrast enhance; layer masked less crunchy more fuzzy; Astroframe.
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