[Rex]

Hi everyone, I haven't done any imaging in quite some time. Life seems to find ways of getting in the way of our hobbies. I am coming into a period of having some spare time, (hopefully), so was looking around for a new astrophotography scope to add to my set up. I was looking at the GSO 8" f/4, but found this skywatcher locally, and the build quality is much better. I have only just managed to process this photo, (still 4 others to do yet), and thought I would post it for comment and hopefully some C&C so that I can get better. My processing skills have a long way to go, which I think is evident in the photo but that's part of the fun, and as they say practice makes perfect. Hope you guys like it and thanks for looking.

On a side note there seems to be double diffraction spikes in this image, not sure if it's a focus issue, (hadn't made a baht mask at this stage), or maybe collimation. I collimated with my chesire that I have been using for years on my f/5 dob, but I realise that f/4 is a whole new game. I will order a Cats eye in the next month or so, but until then if someone has any ideas about what's causing it would be great to hear. Any tips on processing would also be welcome.

Image details:
Object: M42 Orion Nebula and NGC1977 Running Man
Location: North of Townsville NQLD
Camera: Unmodded Canon 1100D Astronomic CLS-CCD clip filter
Scope: Newly aquired carbon fibre Skywatcher 8" f/4 astrograph, MPCC
Exposure: Combination of 10 x 300sec & 10 x 60sec @ ISO800
Guiding: QHY5 4" f/5 newt and PHD
Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop CS2

I did a reprocess of this as I felt I way over-smoothed the original. I also incorporated Carl's suggestion when combining. I really liked the saturation of the second but lost some of the extended nebulosity so I also did a combine of the original and the reprocessed image which hopefully captured the best of both. Let me know which you prefer, and please tell me if you see something wrong as I really don't know what I am doing, and I am hoping to improve. thanks for looking.