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Whilst waiting for clear weather, I decided to reuse some data that was previously acquired by my Skywatcher ED80 and my Esprit 150. I used the Esprit data to get maximum detail on M106 and its companion NGC4248, whilst I reprocessed the ED 80 data such that the resultant background showed very faint objects. The ED 80 data is LRGB whilst the Esprit data also contains a Ha blend into the red channel. On the processing side, I used RegiStar to align the Esprit 150 and ED 80 images and then used Pixinsight's Gradient Mosaic Merge to create a seamless image. Alan M106 M106 (annotated)

I've been continuing to work on my 14" double truss newt - recent activities include mounting a PC (a Gigabyte Brix - pictured) on the scope along with power distribution - I now have it down to 2 wires between scope and the floor (SBIG ST power cable and 12V) which much reduces drag/snag type situations. I also found and corrected an issue with the Moonlite CR2 (I was a bit shy in the Crayford tension, which gave rise to play in the drawtube). Fixing that, and sorting out balance issues and tweaking up the polar alignment has helped enormously in getting much tighter stars - here's an example of my guiding last night once I'd sorted out the right calibration steps for PHD2 (this at native 1582mm FL with an OAG using an ASI120MM). Also, I've been using a trial of SGP to try and rationalise the number of bits of software in use - it's quite a learning curve (!), but I managed to get 75min of data to fall out last night until the clouds stopped play. So here's M106 in CVn (along with NGC4248 and some other much fainter and distant galaxies - at full res for pixel peepers...) - 25x3min Lum using an ST2000XM. t's a bit noisy in places as it needs more signal, but that's not the scope's fault! Processed in PI, but haven't got anything to shoot flats sorted out (yet...: I just got a 600mm LED panel light to mount in the dome for doing flats). I would quite like a good clear run to get a full set of data here (and flats to follow!)... All in all, this looks like justification for embarking on this project from the early days of starting rebuilding the original Orion SPX350 - it's taken ages really, but I think it should be worth it from these early results. One happy astronomer

This is the first "proper" image from my rebuilt 14" Newtonian - has been a long time coming, and more tweaking to follow, but pleased how it performed. I've made a light box which works well and used data from evenings of 13th/15th Feb to create this image (but this showed the R channel, I think, where the OAG impinges and throws an odd reflection and doesn't reduce nicely - need to sort.... :-/). This is M106 and NGC 4248 (and a load of other faint fuzzies including at least one z>1.0 QSO right at the far left edge of the frame, as well as lots of anonymous galaxies that don't feature in anything in Simbad/Vizier). North is roughly down in this image. L: 5h35m (56x5m + 21x3m) R: 1h45m (21 x 5m, 2x2 bin) G: 1h20m (16 x 5m, 2x2 bin) B: 1h20m (16 x 5m, 2x2 bin) ST2000XM (@-20C), 350mm double truss Newtonian @ f4.53 (1584mm FL), Losmandy Titan. Guiding via ASI120mm on OAG. Reduction and Processing in Pixinsight. The L channel behaved nicely; colour less so, and was a bit of a challenge to get it to behave, especially the background which I needed to be quite firm with to remove blotchiness. I think really the moral is: more data... a bit more colour (and lum!) data might allow a bit more from the outer reaches and a much smoother background, but clear skies are what they are... Haven't got any HA here to bring out the jets, but the brightest (above/south of the core) is just about visible. All comments/suggestions/improvements appreciated! Thanks for looking. LRGB: Lum channel (pushed a touch more than the above...) - EDIT: had a tweak of it:

A LRGB image of M106 with an Ha blend into the red channel. Along with the main galaxy (M106) and NGC4248 (bottom right), quite a few very distant galaxies can also be seen in the background. The total image integration time was just under 16 hours and was taken with my SW Esprit 150 and Trius 814 camera. The image was processed using four software packages: CCDstack: calibration, registration, data rejection, deconvolution (L), DDP stretch. PS: colour enhancement, noise reduction, sharpening, mask generation, image blending. Pixinsight: gradient reduction (DBE), photometric colour calibration, sharpening (MLT), HDR Multiscale Processing, dark structure enhance Neat Image: background noise reduction. Alan

A LRGB image of M106 with an Ha blend into the red channel. Along with the main galaxy (M106) and NGC4248 (bottom right), quite a few very distant galaxies can also be seen in the background. M106 is quite bright in Ha, so I decided to blend 6.5 hours into the red channel to obtain a more structural detail. The total image integration time was just under 16 hours and was taken with my Esprit 150. Alan LIGHTS: L:14, R:14, G:13, B:15 x 600s, Ha:13 x 1800s, DARKS:30. BIAS:100, FLATS:40 all at -20C.

But not in one field I collected subframes for these two at the end of April and beginning of May this year, but just over last few days found the time to make some final processing. Conditions these days were not ideal - seeing was ok, but transparency was moderate under my suburban sky. So I had some hard time with colour balance and processing, but eventually I think I managed to set them close to proper values Setup was: Meade ACF 10" with AP CCDT67 telecompressor, QHY163M camera and EQ6 mount. Guided with SW 80/400 + ASI290MM. M106 details: LRGB 45:15:10:12 x 2 minutes. NGC4565 details: LRGB 100:15:10:12 minutes. The image targets do not require any more introduction I think Thanks for watching!

The image was captured over several nights and represents about 15 hours integration time. Quite a few additional galaxies appear in the image, perhaps the most notable being NGC4217 (bottom right). Alan LIGHTS: L:17; R:19; G:20; B:18 x 600s; 6 x 1800 Ha. BIAS:100; DARKS: 30; FLATS:40 all at -20C.

Six galaxies in one shot! All of them can be found in the constellation Canes Venatici. The larger galaxy on the left of the frame is Messier 106 (also known as NGC 4258), a spiral galaxy, the others are possibly companion galaxies. 20 x 8 minute exposures at 400 ISO 11 x dark frames 10 x flat frames 21 x bias/offset frames (subtracted from flat frames only) Guided with PHD Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop Equipment: Celestron NexStar 127 SLT GoTo AltAz mount with homemade wedge Orion 50mm Mini Guide Scope ZWO ASI120 MC imaging and guiding camera Canon 700D DSLR

One of the items that I find my most challenging in deep sky imaging is obtaining the correct colours and overall colour balance, so, having recently purchased Pixinsight I thought I'd explore some of its features on some data gathered earlier in the year. For this image, I used Pixinsight's linear fit, followed by a background neutralization and then a colour calibration using M106 as the white reference point. I was quite impressed by the results. As a bit of fun I also decided to try Pixinsight's abilities on identifying the various galaxies in the image. The image is a Ha red blend LRGB and represents about 15 hours of data. Alan

Since the UK weather has not been very good recently, I've been watching yet more PS tutorials. So armed with a bit more knowledge, I decided to have another attempt at reprocessing my recent M106. Since the previous image was a bit red, I decided to use a more aggressive black clipping of the Ha data before blending into the red channel. I currently use the PS Screen blending mode to incorporate the Ha data into the RGB image. Since Screen is an additive blending function, it spreads the Ha signal much more than the alternative option of using PS Lighten. I also discovered that I could improve the image quality if I applied noise reduction to the Ha signal prior to blending. Anyway, after a few more PS tweaks: M106 with bonus galaxies: M106 crop: Lights: L17:, R:19, G:20: B:18 at 600s and 6 Ha at 1800s. DARKS: 30; BIAS: 100; FLATS: 40 at -20C. Alan

Just thought I'd share my latest pic, M106 9th mag spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici, taken the same week as my Markarian photo: 8 out of 13 lights at 300s, ISO800, equipment as per sig, DSLR through 1.5x barlow, darks, flats and bias, Pixinsight. Session abandoned eventually due to build-up of thin cirrus. Hope you like it