Setup/Capture

1. Polar alignment (pier) and collimation adjusted several months ago.

2. During day, swapped SII/OIII/Ha filters for G, B, R.

3. Low-humidity day. Cleaned corrector plate.

4. Uncovered scope around 5 PM to stabilize for 8 PM start.

5. Took new flats and flat darks for R, G and B filters. Used Optec Flat-Man.

6. Checked focus using Bahtinov mask. Optec FocusLock within 5% round. Will keep parfocal setting as is.

7. Blew dust off corrector plate and attached Astrozap dew shield.

8. Slew to target using Pinpoint Platesolve with USNO A2.0.

9. No strong guide star. Adjusted ONAG to find one.

10. Determined 10 min for L and 15 min for RGB will not overexpose M95.

11. Cooled camera, Enabled PHD2 with dither and started capture after FocusLock settled. Run unattended until 4 AM, then stop tracking and warm camera. Park manually later (to avoid potential pier collision), blow dust and cover. No stray light or wind issues this time.

12. Repeated 4, 7, 8 and 11 over several days.

Custom Processing for local sky. 2 hour workflow includes...

1. Manually inspect all frames to eliminate plane or satellite tracks.

2. MaxIm DL6 for calibration, quality rejection, stacking, alignment, and combination to produce L and RGB.

3. L processing included PI > Mirror, Crop, ABE, 20 star DynamicPSF with DE/star mask/galaxy mask. Stretch using automatic HT with some manual tweaks. Follow with HDR 6 layer and LHE 0.2, both with a star mask. Follow up in PS with NeatImage, Shadows and HPF sharpening. Tweak LHE a bit more in PI.

4. RGB includes PI > Crop, Mirror, ABE, BN, CC, HDR4, and LHE2. Follow up in PS with Shadows, Lab Color Mode color stretching, HVLG, Levels, Curves, Gradient Exterminator, Shadows, Color Balance the shadows and complete noise removal using NeatImage.

5. Combine L and RGB in PS (after alignment in PI) using Blurred Saturation Layering technique followed by Shadows, HVLG, color Balance, Selective Color tweaks, star shrink and subtle noise reduction. No PI > TGV used this time.