Once again, finding M106 with the PicGoto is just a matter of centering a bright star (in this case Phad) and pressing the "goto" button. Conditions were excellent, but once again I had nasty guiding issues, especially after performing a meridian flip. Things would go along smoothly for a while, then it seemed as if the RA tracking would just stop for a while, then start up again. After thinking about this and fighting it late into the wee hours, it finally occurred to me that what is probably happening is that the mount guides fine until it bumps. At that point I go out and do a meridian flip, but in the process of bumping I'm driving the mount against the tripod leg and that loosens up the clutches (thank goodness; otherwise I'd strip everything!). The loose clutches then result in erratic behavior after the flip. Once I tightened everything up, the guiding was excellent. I was trying the unorthodox approach of making the scope west-heavy rather than the usual east-heavy, and it seemed to help. I backed off from the 600 s subframes I have been taking lately and went with 300 s. This way I'll probably have to throw out fewer, but I'm still well off the noise floor.

In the revision, I've done similar processing except I used "cap green to yellow" instead of "brown", I've deconvoluted more (2.5 pixels), I've done some wavelet sharpening, and I've used an unsharp mask with a layer mask in Photoshop to bring out the dust lanes. Overall, a bit more rigorous attempt to sharpen in the core.

Date: 1 May 2014

Subject: M106

Scope: AT8IN + HPS Coma Corrector

Filter: None

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

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.2.2 (Win 7 ASCOM)

Camera: DSI IIc no chiller T = 13 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.0, no dither

Exposure: 49x300 s

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

Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.279 Crop; Wipe 75%; Develop 87.1%; HDR:Reveal core; Color:Scientific, 300% sat., cap green to brown; Deconvolute auto mask 2.1 pix; Life:Moderate; Track RNC 49.51%; Magic:Shrink 1. CS6 Astronomy Tools increase star color; Healing brush; Deep space noise reduction; Space noise reduction; Less crunch more fuzzy; layer mask the denoising; Astro Frame.