Cleaned my primary mirror and realigned everything, so I had high hopes for this image. Unfortunately, there was some high haze that played havoc. We also had a bit of light breeze. PicGoto synced from Phad, which was trivially easy after actually getting it in my field of view. I've finally learned the secret to getting Astrotortilla to plate solve correctly even at my maximum magnification: you have to apply a bad pixel map to the image you're trying to plate solve, or you get too many bad pixels posing as stars. After doing that and deBayering, the plate solves worked every time. My goal was to get a better image than I produced two years ago, but I don't think I achieved that; maybe I should be more selective in my stacking. I tried with and without drizzling, and with either Nebulosity or DSS doing the stacking. I think the DSS 2x drizzled version turned out best. The colors from the Nebulosity stack turned out bluish, whereas the DSS stack produced more yellows; I have no idea why, but most images on Astrobin seem to show a yellow bar with more blue in the spiral arms. I thought the nickname provided by Stellarium was funny, so it put it in my caption.

Date: 25 Mar 2015

Subject: M109, “Vacuum Cleaner” galaxy

Scope: Astrotech AT8IN+High Point Scientific coma corrector

Filter: Baader Fringe Killer

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.4.1 (Win 7 ASCOM)

Camera: DSI IIc no cooling (about 8 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.3.3, no dither

Exposure: 36x600 s

Stacking: Neb 3.3.3, bad pixel map, bias included, 33 flats, histogram match, deBayer & square. DSS 2x drizzle (1.5)-sigma combine.

Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.289 Crop; Wipe:80%; Develop: 81.18%; HDR:Reveal core; Color:Scientific, 230%; Deconvolute 3.5 pix; Life:Moderate; Track 6.9 pix; Magic:Shrink 1 pix. Photoshop CC 2014 + Carboni Astronomy Tools Deep space noise reduction; layer masked space noise reduction; star color enhance; smudge tool to fix some star artifacts; Astroframe.