The M 106 galaxy is bright and large as galaxies go in our night sky. But it has a problem. In the compact space of the camera sensor, M 106 contains structures that can only be seen at widely varying ranges of illumination. Stretch the histogram too much and obscure subtle structures in bright regions. Stretch it too little and dim structures like its complex rim will be lost in darkness. The solution is to divide the image into multiple layers, develop each layer for a specific range of luminosity, then composite the layers back onto each other in such a way that all the information is preserved. It's almost like folding light back on itself.
You can see the full res finished image at the Sky Story Astrobin: www.astrobin.com/srftyp/
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