Folks,
I caught the eye of Princess Andromeda for a few nights up at AstroFest and also managed to catch all the nasty atmospheric conditions along with it. This is about half the data I captured, the rest is worse
Anyhow, I'm not wild about this, so wanted to put it out there for suggestions. What's the best way to handle stars? This image was processed without a star mask, and as there's also a bout of unsavoury gradient from one of the nights contributing to this data set. I've tried playing around in DBE and can't really get it levelled out

Consequently, I've not stretched it as much as I would like too. Maybe it just needs more and/or better data?
Any/all tips and tricks appreciated
Cheers,
Dunk