Thanks Guys,
Appreciate the details. This is slowly coming together for me and I'm sure I will eventually stop thinking and just do, but it is immensely helpful for me to get this deep technically.
Displaying a JPEG version makes sense as it is easy to do and would serve the purpose. I'll have to somehow make a comparison of the display against my editor and see if the resolution of the histogram is significantly different.
The first couple of images I have posted were just so-so, since I was using a mediocre telescope and was not very particular in my mount setup. It was all just to get something to practice with.
But now I have another set of data that I have started to work with, but stopped, when I decided I needed to know more about processing. I would like to invite anyone who is interested to take a look and maybe relate some of what we have been talking about here to this set of data. Here is a link to the data on my OneDrive cloud storage. I don't remember all the details, and my work computer won't natively read RAW files, but here is what I do remember... Canon 450D, Bresser-Messier 127mm f/5.5, SW HEQ5 Pro, not guided but drift aligned. 40 subs, 30-40 sec ea., ISO 400 (I think). There is a set of darks, and what I hope are bias subs (fast shutter speed, same ISO). Sorry I didn't name them, I just looked at the details when I started stacking...
I'll get my workflow together soon!
Here is the link...
https://1drv.ms/f/s!AlH7c1YqjBS4g9pUq5-foUIJn2LsWg
I've already run this once through DSS and saved my end result as a TIFF, and welcome any comments, particularly around Dunk's recommendations of exposure. Is the data good, bad, or indifferent? Under-exposed? Not long enough. There is a strong source of light pollution (Gosford CBD) below the constellation so I was trying not to bring too much of that into the image.