It was a major struggle trying to get this image. The first night I tried I could not for the life of me get plate solving to work, but still managed to find the target because my goto was pretty good. However, by the time I got things going the clouds had moved in so I decided to throw in the towel; I got nothing. The second night was much the same story: plate solves did not work but the goto was good and I was plagued by clouds the whole time. I also kept having my image downloads fail and my guider kept hanging. Focus, on the other hand, was very tight. Eventually I fell asleep. When I woke, I found the mount had done an automatic meridian flip (I carefully set meridian and horizon limits earlier in the evening) but to my surprise NGC 3184 was still in my field of view and the sky looked better (though still not completely clear). I decided to return to my old Nebulosity-controlled acquisition workflow since I was already past the meridian, so I set up the session and went to bed. About half my subs turned out to be usable. Obviously I need more data, but after all the trouble I was happy to get what I got.

Date: 17 Mar 2016

Subject: NGC 3184, Little Pinwheel Galaxy

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: Nebulosity 4.0.4

Exposure: 17x600 s

Stacking: Neb 4, bad pixel map, bias included, 33 flats, CMYG nebula filter, match histograms, trans+rot align, Nebulosity 40-60%tile stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.4.305: Crop; Wipe; Develop: 83.47%; HDRptimize; Color:Scientific, 200% saturation; Deconvolute: 2.5 pix; Life:Moderate; Track: Smoothness 87%, 4.5 pix; Magic, shrink 1 pix. Photoshop CS6 + Astronomy Tools: Deep space noise reduction; Levels; Increase star color; lots of liquify/pucker on bright star; local contrast enhance; Astroframe.