[Rex]

Originally Posted by rmuhlack

Nice image Rex!

One strategy to improve the appearance of the stars is to use a Masked Stretch in Pixinsight instead of stretching the image with HistogramTransformation. Find the darkest part of your image and select that as a preview (I would often use a preview box about 20x20 pixels - it doesn't need to be large). Then use this preview as the background sample in the MaskedStretch process.

The effect of the MaskedStretch is to stretch the nebulosity without overly stretching the stars. This reduces the star size in the final image which lessens the impact (to a degree) of funky star shapes caused by optical issues such as tilt.

You can also use a star mask (masking everything except the stars), and then use MorphologicalTransformation in 'erosion' mode to reduce the size of the stars. Dont over do it here. try increments of say 25%.

I would be tempted to probably back off your noise reduction as well. I reckon there is some extra detail in there that you're missing due to the noise reduction step.

These are just small things, as that's a good image. In fact i'd call that a graduation from "Beginners Astrophotography" into the main game

Thanks Richard for the compliments and the tips, I am still on that slippery learning curve wit PI but I am absolutely loving it. As for the noise reduction, I only did 1 round of ATWT, but the image was very clean to start with so maybe I need to tamper with some of the other settings before running it. As I'm processing my images I always save each step as I go. I went back and got the image from before the noise reduction and have attached it to my first post for comparison. the only processing that has been applied to the second image is DBE, BG neutralisation, Colour Calibration, and of course a Histogram stretch. The rest is as it came out of the integration process. Thank you for the graduation certificate, lol, maybe once I have sorted out the issues with this image, I will post it in the Deep sky section. Thanks again for your help.

Originally Posted by raymo

That is also a ripper, Ripper Rex.
raymo

lol, Thanks Raymo.

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

That's a top shelf "bigfoot" Rex.

Thanks Kevin. I actually feel like I am improving with each image. Can't wait till I sort out the focuser issue.

Originally Posted by LightningNZ

That's a really nice capture Rex. The data's starting to look really natural and smooth.

Thanks Cam, I am pretty happy with it.