2.5h OSC camera image at F 4.0 , f =1200 mm under  Bortle 6 skies.     A high dynamic range luminance image was  compiled from the luminance channel (FWHM 2.4) of the OSC image and  a higher resolutiion (FWHM ~ 1.8 -) image from 1047 x 3s mono camera exposures.  The idea was to improve the sharpness and detailing at the bright core. After LR deconvolution - BlurXt on the final version - the high dynamic range luminance was transferred into the OSC image and the final image adjusted with curves (PixInsight) and tidied up in Affinity and Photoscape.

The original image is a RGBHA image showing the HA arms .  This used data from a 2.5h mono camera HA  image - a small part of which was added into the red channel of the OSC image.  This is not included in the final image since the resolution of the HA was poor relative to the luminance image of the core.

M106 is a large spiral galaxy - similar in size and luminosity to the Andromeda galaxy and the milky way -  in Canes venaceti  - about 24 M ly distant. It is inclined to our line of sight and has been classified as a Seyfert 2 type with an active nucleus having a supermassive black hole and disturbed spiral arms, probably disturbed due to an encounter with one of its neighboring galaxies, possibly NGC 4217 - a probable companion galaxy - which is also shown in the image. 

 M106 is that it has a water vapor megamaser (a galaxy-sized microwave laser)  -evidenced by a 22GHz water line-  which must correspond to warm dense water vapour.  As well as this microwave emission from Messier 106’s heart, the galaxy has another unusual feature – instead of two spiral arms, it appears to have four.   The additional two arms can be seen in radio and X-Rays and are also visible as red HA Balmer light indicating wispy  arms of H+ ions emanating from the galaxy core.  These two extra arms are made up of hot gas rather than stars, and , like the microwave emission from the galactic centre, are thought to originate from the activity of the black hole at Messier 106’s core wherein they arise as an indirect result of jets of material produced by the violent churning of matter around the black hole. As these jets travel through the galactic matter they disrupt and heat up the surrounding gas, which in turn excites the denser gas in the galactic plane and causes it to glow brightly. This denser gas closer to the centre of the galaxy is tightly-bound, and so the arms appear to be straight whereas, the looser disc gas further out is blown above or below the disc in the opposite direction from the jet, so that the gas curves out of the disc.  Dark dust lanes block our views into the core of the galaxy in the optical.  A Type II supernova was observed in M106 in 2014.