John, that is some seriously good data. Well done for persevering and getting so much of it. Some considerable detail is emerging too. With Pixinsight, I stack batches of maximum 200 frames and then use Pixelmath to combine the stacks if I, say, have 400 or 600. Doing DBEs on each 200 stack seems to produce better results for me too, although still too early for me to confirm whether that’s coincidence or not.
Have you heard of the
GHS script? It’s a script for stretching with far greater control. Personally, I’ve found my stars look a lot better since adopting that script in my workflow. I got the idea
here.
If you have $90 to spare, you might also consider purchasing
NoiseXterminator. Personally, I only use it at 75-80% as I find a bit of grain pleasing to the eye, but it does a tremendous job and doesn’t seem to add any artefacts. There’s a free trial, but a word of warning: once tried, there’s no going back to old noise reduction methods!
Again, great job on this image. It’s coming along really nicely.
Stephane