I fought clouds through the early part of this session, but the forecast said they would clear later and they did. I also did not get my tripod very level, so my gotos were way off and I initially had trouble getting good plate solves as a result. Finally I went out and looked through the Telrad to see where I was really pointing and realized I was off a few degrees in RA. Fixing that enabled things to work as desired, although the focus went soft toward the end of the session so I threw out a lot of subs. Another less-frequently imaged, but interesting and beautiful galaxy. Again the automatic color balance made it more red than I like, so I backed off the red a bit.
Date: 9 Mar 2016
Subject: NGC 3521, flocculent spiral galaxy in Leo
Scope: AT8IN + High Point Scientific 2” Coma Corrector
Filter: Baader Planetarium UHC-S
Mount: EQ-6 (EQMOD)
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 4 °C
Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro 2.4.3.25 with Nebulosity 4.0.4 ASCOM camera driver
Exposure: 16x600 s
Stacking: Neb 4, bad pixel map, bias included, 33 flats, CMYG nebula filter, match histograms, trans+rot align, Deep Sky Stacker 1.5σ κ-σ stack without drizzle.
Processing: StarTools 1.4.305: Crop; Wipe; Develop: 86.31%; HDR
ptimize; Color:Scientific, 200% saturation, red bias reduce at 1.42; Deconvolute: 2.8 pix; Track: Smoothness 87%, 4.5 pix; Magic, shrink 2 pix. Photoshop CS6 + Astronomy Tools: Deep space noise reduction; Increase star color; layer-masked local contrast enhance; layer-masked less crunchy more fuzzy; Liquify/pucker on brighter stars; Astroframe.
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