This is only 2 hours of luminance data
so it's early days for this image (!). There isn't enough signal yet to be able to mitigate the noise so yep, it's still there! This also stopped me from doing much processing - but I at least made it look presentable I hope. I need at least another 2 to 4 hours of Lum to make a meal of it.
In any case 
... this was the
real first light of the new (now collimated) scope!!!!!!
The seeing on the night was only average with raw FWHM of 2.06 arcseconds for the stacked frame. I did some mild deconvolution which bought that down to 1.75 arcseconds. Stars appear round (enough) from edge to edge. ... I'm well pleased!
Full Res & full frame (less a bit of edge trimming for stacking artefacts):
http://www.pbase.com/gailmarc/image/155783443/original
Cheers, Marcus
PS: This is of course NGCs 5101 (left) and 5078 - a mind bogglingly beautiful field!
Next post will be in the Deep space section when it's finished!