Hi Rob,
Thanks!
You're definitely right about the additional data - especially from a light-polluted location. The hard part is sifting the data from all the noise and muck...
I can (usually) get good images with my normal rig, and I'm testing the Megalens to see how it performs for astro work. It's an f10, so really "slow" and has terrible vignetting. However, the longer reach makes up for that - or so I'm telling myself...
I've described Affinity Photo as a PhotoShop "clone" but at a much better price point and with all the features you'll ever need in an image editing program. It also has some astrophotography features built in and James Ritson has developed a library of macros specifically for astro processing.
I haven't touched GIMP, so am not in a position to offer a detailed comparison between that and Affinity.
Cheers,
V.