As always, easily found in the Telrad. I put the focal reducer right on the nosepiece of the camera, which I have previously determined gives a reduction of 0.57x without introducing significant coma. I spent quite a bit of time working on adjusting the focuser tension and trying to tune up the mount by working on the RA worm adjustments. I also played a lot with the balance to try to improve the guiding. There were intermittent clouds, but overall conditions were excellent. All of this paid off with the best image I have produced of this subject, by far. I also learned some tricks about retaining color in galaxies in the postprocessing, which I used (detailed below). I’m very happy with the result; it finally feels like I’m getting near the limits of what my equipment can do. The image includes SN2013am in M65 (the galaxy at the bottom left; the supernova is on the long axis of the galaxy. There are 3 bright spots to the left of the core, and I believe SN2013am is the middle one.)

In the revision I've used some things I've learned in the last month about how to handle and enhance color. I'm having some problems with darkening the background because the monitors available to me don't have particularly high dynamic range; nasty backgrounds can be present, but I can't see them.

Date: 5 Apr 2013

Subject: M65, M66, NGC 3628, the Leo Trio

Scope: AT8IN + Antares 0.5x focal reducer directly on nosepiece (0.57x)

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.01

Camera: DSI IIc (chiller, T = 1.5 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.5, no dither

Exposure: 41x300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3 Crop, Mask out the galaxies, Wipe, Develop, HDRptimize, Deconvolute:3, Track, Magic:Shrink 1 pixel, Color:Saturation 373, Life:Moderate Sat. 97, Color:Bottom Sat 2.7; CS6 Astronomy Tools AstroFrame.