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Hi Wes,
Great pic you have here. No blown out core and trap is clear.
15 minutes for M42 is ok but more time is better. Ive done a couple of 2 hour ones and you start to get the dust around M42 and the running man.
Im only a beginer too but im starting to work out processing a bit more.
Hope you dont mind but I stretched your image a little and tried HDR and its pretty grainy but brought out a fair bit of detail. I didn't do any colour balancing or any sharpening but you can get an idea what data you already have. With the original you should be able to do the same but not so grainy.
Theres also a technique that you mask the core and stretch the rest and then blend both back together so you preserve the core without blowing it right out.
This is my basic workflow and it works for me.
Stack in deep sky stacker
Curves, levels, maybe a colour balance, sharpen a little, then crop all in Photoshop.
I was at a point of giving up a while ago but when the weather is bad ive been going back and playing with old data and squeezing more out of my images but there is a point where noise overtakes signal.
Anyway you seem to getting good data so keep what you're doing.
Cheers
Andy
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