Way too much Moon for a really good image, but the sky was very clear and I wanted to test the modifications I've made to MyFocuserPro (redid the wiring, updated the code and ASCOM driver, adjusted tension on the focuser). I also upgraded to the newest versions of EQMOD and Sequence Generator Pro, so there were lots of changes. After making a good meridian flip, the run failed while attempting to autofocus for the blue filter, apparently because of an imager download hang. I got the B data and more luminance the next night without hanging too badly. The focuser adjustments seemed to help because I got good autofocus each time I used it (as long as I didn’t get a download failure). I think I like the color balance I get using LRGB filter techniques better than those I got with the one-shot color camera. There are quite a few faint fuzzies in this part of the sky. I'll frame this a little differently next time, but I was trying to pick up some of the fuzzies.

Date: 12-13 Apr 2017

Subject: M101, Pinwheel Galaxy

Scope: AT8IN + High Point Scientific coma corrector

Filters: ZWO 31 mm diameter unmounted L, R, G, B

Mount: EQ-6 (EQMOD 2.000j)+PEC

Guiding: Orion Thin Off-axis Guider + DSI +PHD 2.6.3.2 (Win 10 ASCOM) using predictive PEC algorithm

Camera: ASI1600MM-Cool, -20 °C, Gain 0 Offset 10

Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro 2.6.0.21

Exposure: 90x180 L, 20x180 R, 20x180 G, 22x180 B

Stacking: Neb 4.1.5, flats & darks, trans+rot align, Nebulosity 1.5σ stack and align.

Processing: StarTools 1.4.327. Aggressively stretched and deconvoluted the luminance. Combined RGB in Neb 4 and stretched, color balanced, and sharpened in StarTools. Layered luminance over RGB in Photoshop CC 2014, boosted the saturation a little, used Carboni’s Astronomy Tools deep space noise reduction, did a little layer masked unsharp masking on M101, and a little layer masked levels to get rid of some sky glow, topped off with AstroFrame.